


i've got the mic (if you've got the mosh pit)

by monsterjournalism, throats



Series: mics are for singing not swinging [4]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Punisher (Comics), The Defenders (Marvel TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, cop lives don't matter, good news: dogs, grassroots organizing: the fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-11 00:17:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 171,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12923229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterjournalism/pseuds/monsterjournalism, https://archiveofourown.org/users/throats/pseuds/throats
Summary: “Well, didn’t you just say it yourself?” Ellison replies. “Frank Castle doesn’t talk. He doesn’t do interviews.”“Castle will talk,” Karen says, nodding. “He will. To me.”He’s going to. She’ll get him on record.Or crash and burn rather spectacularly trying, but. Karen’s not going to consider that option.-Karen Page, hot-head journalist, meets Frank Castle, New York hardcore scene stalwart.





	1. Spring 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> true life: this fic was largely planned and conceived before the release of the show and sadie and i would just like you all to know: fuck you, we are prophets. 
> 
> this fic is about two people who have been through A Lot of Shit and they're each at different points in recovery. it's a shippy fic, yeah, but it's also an ensemble fic with most of the characters plucked from the punisher comics rather than the show. the micro here is very different than the micro in the show; frank's other band mates are kathy o'brien from garth ennis' punisher MAX run (except she’s trans and she’s a lesbian and there will be no bullshit this time) and rachel cole alves from greg rucka's punisher. there will also be other marvel characters we love making surprise appearances. 
> 
> we will be actively discussing the fact that frank was shot in the head and is living with a traumatic brain injury, 'cause that shit is important. 
> 
> content warnings: violence (surprise), ableism/ableist language, PTSD related flashbacks (war related and not). 
> 
> musical notes: leatherneck's full length album _front toward enemy_ is secretly _XO_ by leathermouth (yeah, we're hilarious). you can listen to the songs, pitched to frank's vocal register, [here](http://sonnywortzik.tumblr.com/post/165095336693/the-growl-that-follows-is-nothing-short-of-feral). neither of us are frank iero. the lyrics of "death's head" are from _punisher: born_ by garth ennis.

Okay so maybe the truth of it is that Karen Page doesn’t want to be a music journalist. _Okay_. It’s just – she doesn’t really care?  

It’s not the kind of journalism she wants to be doing. She wants to be _possessed_ with a story. She wants to have questions, ones that demand answers, ones that keep her up at night.

Instead, in Karen’s five months at _AltPress_ she has written: 86 quizzes ( _Which My Chemical Romance Era Are You?, Build a Myspace Profile and We’ll Tell You Who to Date!_ ), 134 listicles, 56 pieces of news copy, and 6 album reviews.

And it’s killing her. Strangling her, even. She’s going to asphyxiate in a noose made out of clickbait for people who never got out of their emo phase. 

She wants to _give a shit._

Which is why she applies for the job at the new podcasting arm of _AltPress_. She just needs – something else. At least the podcasts require more research. Better research.  

She gets picked up by _AltTrish_ , which despite having the worst name of all of the podcasts seems. Promising. At the very least, from what Karen knows about Trish Walker’s post- _Patsy_ career as a radio host, it looks like she might finally be able to sink her teeth into a story.

Even if it ends up being a profile on the Hell’s Kitchen scene. Trish tells her to start with The Chaste – there’s a show, and Trish wants audio from it for the podcast. Karen convinces her to let her write about the show on _AltTrish’_ s blog. It’s no government cover-up, but it’s a story. Karen Page has a story.

She has her camera and a voice recorder app on her phone. She’s armed for it.

 

* * *

 

The bar isn’t the worst shithole Karen’s seen (growing up in rural Vermont will teach anyone the true scope of America’s dive bars), but it certainly isn’t the best, either. The Chaste is long and narrow until it widens out in the back, like a “T”. The stage is tucked away, cutting diagonally across the far right corner, the bar running along the vertical of the “T” shape. 

The walls are plastered with posters advertising upcoming shows and shows long past. A quick Google search had revealed that The Chaste’s been in business for twenty years, the first ten under different management as The Hand. New owners had cleaned up its act. Now it’s apparently a cornerstone of Manhattan’s punk scene.

Provided there is one. Karen’s doubtful. If she’s learned anything in the last four days she’s spent in the rabbit hole of Google research, the punk scene in Manhattan’s been steadily moving home towards Brooklyn for at least twenty years, maybe more.

A woman works behind the bar, cleaning glasses. There’s a guy with a shaved head at the sound table in the back, wearing a dark gray jacket despite the late spring heat. Doors are at six-thirty, show at seven - and it’s not yet past four.

“Show’s in three hours,” the woman says, pulling Karen’s eyes from a poster announcing a Midtown show from 2001.

The woman’s dark eyes are trained on her camera bag, moving down her dress and shoes then back up again. Her face, in turn, is impossible to read, despite the fact that her hair’s pulled into a loose knot, exposing an undercut on one side of her head. That’s a bit infuriating. Karen’s own face is her biggest traitor. It’s why she leaves her hair down, gives her something to hide behind. Meanwhile, this woman exposes everything and reveals nothing, more plainly self assured than Karen thinks she’s been in her entire goddamn life.

Karen walks up to the bar. Her heels (low, sensible, two-inches, because she’s not an idiot) click on the bar’s floor. “I know,” she says carefully. “I wanted to check it out first. Scope out a good spot for photos.” Karen taps her camera bag.

The woman raises an eyebrow. “Trish’s new intern?” she asks, apropos of nothing.

Karen blinks in return, surprised. “Uh, yeah,” she says, rubbing her hand over the back of her neck. “How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” she says, sphinx-like. “You want a drink?”

“Sure,” Karen breathes. The bartender’s still looking at her. Right. Ordering a drink. Get it together, Page. “Uh, can I get a mule?” she asks, reaching into her tote for her wallet.

“You’re all set,” the woman says, before Karen can fish her card out of her over-packed wallet, business cards and receipts from the bagel place she’d been to earlier threatening to spill all over the counter.

She frowns, starts, “What –”

“I’m putting it on Trish’s tab,” the bartender replies, flashing a smile that Karen wants to describe as _cat-like_ before reaching for a glass with one hand and vodka with the other. “We don’t have any mugs,” she says, when Karen’s eyes land on the glass. “That gonna be a problem?”

Karen shakes her head. “Not at all.” She pushes her hands through her hair.

“Good,” the woman says, dropping the lime wedge in her drink before sliding it over.

“Thanks,” Karen breathes. She realizes she doesn’t know the bartender’s name.

“Claire,” she supplies, friendly.

“Karen,” she nods in reply. Karen folds herself into a stool at the end of the bar, dropping her tote on the counter and her camera bag on the stool next to her.

She pulls out her steno book, pen, and phone; opens up her bookmarks app and begins to thumb through her sources. Her pen starts to drag along the lines of her notebook, sketching out the bones of her piece. She takes a sip from her drink. It’s not bad.

“Tonight’s show,” Karen starts, looking up from her work – she’s got another two pages of longhand notes, and a reminder set to look into the correlation between Irish neighborhoods and punk after what she thinks might be an hour or so’s work. She taps her pen against the bartop. “It’s Omega Kid and…”

“The Defenders,” Claire replies. There’s a pinch to the set of her brow. The bar is noisier – the after work crowd’s started to trickle in in earnest. Claire’s a few feet away. “Why?”

“I just, I thought –” she pauses, the connections firing off in her brain too fast for her mouth to keep up. She grabs her phone off the counter with both hands, thumbing away. She _thought_ she saw something on Instagram about The Defenders…

 _There_.

“Holy shit,” Karen breathes. She looks back up at Claire. “Did you know Danny _Rand_ is in The Defenders?”

Claire hums, leaning back against the bar. She’s got one eyebrow quirked, just so. Her mouth tilts up – barely. She knows something. “You think _Danny Rand_ is your story here?” she asks, moving off the bar and busying herself with something out of Karen’s view. Claire snorts. “He’ll be thrilled.”

She feels a flush start to creep across her features. Dammit. This woman knows something and she thinks Karen’s some sort of _outsider_. (She is.) She’s not going to get a thing out of her. Karen knows when a potential source has shut down.  

“Thanks,” she mutters, nodding to herself as she turns back to her notes.

To be totally honest, Karen doesn’t notice when the doors open, too immersed in her writing until Claire raps on the bartop next to her. She’s no longer behind the bar; instead, she’s standing next to Karen’s stool. She says: “You’re probably going to want to pack up, unless you want our friend over there to spill beer on your shit.”

Karen follows Claire’s gaze to a guy who looks like he’s several drinks in already. He’s wearing a button-down and looks out of place among the swath of people in cut up t-shirts, denim vests, and sensible footwear. The man sways next to her.

“Thanks,” Karen repeats, more genuine this time. She shoves her things into her tote and slings it over her shoulder, pulling her camera bag across her body next.

When she looks up, Claire’s already slipping through the growing crowd towards the stage. Karen can see one of The Defenders moving an amp across the stage entirely by himself. Another member, a short woman, frowns at Danny Rand. Her hands sit on her hips, against her perfectly-worn motorcycle jacket. _Jessica_ , Karen assigns.

The Defenders’ website reveals very little about them, but it’s not hard to put a face to the only woman’s name from their brief bio. ( _The Defenders live in New York City. They are Danny, Jessica, Matthew, and Luke._ )

There’s one member missing, then, but Karen can’t see much past the expanding crowd of punk kids. There’s a riot of colored hair, facial piercings, and boots that she can’t help but think are too hot for a May afternoon.

She pulls her camera from her bag and tries to grab a photo of the crowd. Which almost works, until there’s a hand flipping her off taking up most of her shot. She can see chipped nail polish in her viewfinder.

“Photos of the band, asshole,” a vitriolic, nasal voice says when she pulls her camera from her face.

The speaker is tall, with thin, bandy limbs, maybe her age. A pink-purple mohawk adds another handful of inches to their height and they have sharp, arresting blue eyes. Their t-shirt reads, in a bold font: _MAKE THE GUILLOTINE RED AGAIN_. Their boots are the picture of shit-kickers.

Karen rolls her eyes. She doesn’t have time for this crap. “Fine,” she returns, before gesturing to the crowd behind them. “You gonna let me through then? I have to get these shots.”

“Whatever,” they reply, shoving both hands into their pockets and shrugging out of her path.

She tries not to scoff too loud - this is _exactly_ why Karen hates working in music journalism. These people are too goddamn touchy, too sensitive to outsiders. She pushes her way to the front of the crowd.

When she frees herself from the crush – complete with a few more judgmental glares in her direction – she realizes The Defenders are plugging in, exchanging a few words as they get ready to play. One of them tucks something into his ear.

“Shit,” Karen mutters, realizing she’s not ready. She reaches for her phone, frantically thumbing on her voice recorder app, and drops it into the mesh pocket on the side of her camera bag with the hope it’ll pick up the audio she needs. Getting her camera adjusted requires both hands.

She checks over her shutter speed, her aperture, and debates triple-checking she’s got the right film when the band starts, a high note of feedback shattering into heavy drums, bass, and guitar.

Karen raises her camera and begins to shoot. She tries to keep herself anchored on one corner of the stage, closest to where Danny Rand is headbanging behind his keyboard. But by the second song, the crowd is starting to _writhe_ , shoving forward, and Karen feels the monitor she’s leaning against slip as bodies knock it wide. She curses, not even bothering to try to keep quiet – no one’s going to hear her, her ears will be ringing for _days_ – and adjusts, digging her heels in and yanking back the monitor so she can press her torso to it while she tries to angle her shot.

She’s turning to try and get a photo of Jessica behind the drums – knowing that a girl drummer is _exactly_ the kind of thing Trish would love to cover on _AltTrish_ – between songs, when she feels someone tap her shoulder.

It’s like ice water down her spine; the feeling of calloused knuckles just barely rapping on the line where her dress meets her shoulder.

When Karen wheels around, she’s looking at a guy maybe a couple inches shorter than her, thanks to her heels. His dark eyes are narrow, hooded almost by a deeply lined, heavy brow and a yellow and green bruise around the bridge of his nose. 

His jacket is familiar. It’s the guy from the soundboard.

“You good here?” he asks. His voice sounds like he’s been punched in the trachea.

“Excuse me?” she replies, her hackles raising.

“The spot,” he continues, nodding to where her bag’s leaning against the monitor she’s dragged back into place more than once since the start of the set. His voice is less gravelly when he’s shouting to be heard over the crowd. Stage lights flash across his face, reflecting off of brown eyes and briefly illuminating another, smaller bruise, high on his cheekbone. “Are you good?”

Before Karen can even _manage_ a response (because, seriously? _Jesus_ fucking _Christ_ , she’s fucking tired of punk _assholes_ being offended she dares exist in their space) the band strikes up again.

Jessica’s drum roll is tight and fast. Karen’s body sways as yet another person knocks into her side. She adjusts, recovers, and the guy is still looking at her, eyes moving from the monitor to her tote, to the camera in her hand and back to her face.

“I’ve _got_ this,” she spits back, her voice climbing so high in her register (to be heard over the din) that it starts to splinter, before he can say _anything_ else. “Thanks.” She doesn’t fucking mean it. Karen turns away from the guy and just barely manages to get a shot of Danny Rand, who has abandoned his t-shirt, singing the first chorus while standing on the kick drum.

She’s still muttering to herself about dickless punk bros when The Defenders’ set has finished. Karen texts Trish to tell her she’ll send her the audio in the morning before sticking her camera in her bag and shoving her way out of the bar.

 

* * *

 

 Karen feels like an idiot when she runs into Jessica Jones at the _AltTrish_ studio.

“Nice essay, blondie,” Jessica-of-The-Defenders says, when Karen walks into the studio the following Wednesday. She’s wearing the same motorcycle jacket (despite the day’s humidity), black, heavy boots, and denim shorts that look like she’d cut them from pants this morning after looking at the forecast. “Read it on the blog yesterday.”

It’s just a aggressive enough to make Karen’s spine straighten and turn to iron. How the fuck did she get the studio’s _address_? Furthermore why is she here to make vaguely rude comments about Karen’s writing? The fuck? Karen raises her eyebrow.

“You come all this way just to tell me that?” she replies, huffing as she shoves past Jessica. She has to walk sideways to keep from dropping the newspapers and coffee in her arms. Jessica, however, takes the one that’s labeled _Trish_ right out of her hands.

“Are you fucking _kidding me_?” Karen demands, just as Trish comes out of her office.

“Everything okay?” she asks, concern written across her face. Her glasses sit low on her nose, like she’s been staring at a computer screen for too long. Probably has. Trish is the first _AP_ boss that Karen’s had that works more than her. Karen likes that about her.  

“She –” 

“We’re good,” Jessica-of-The-Defenders says, handing Trish her coffee. Karen’s eyebrows crawl so high up her brow they may as well be gone forever, lost to her hairline. Trish kisses Jessica on the cheek.

“Oh, shit,” Karen breathes before she can stop herself.

Jessica-The-Defenders’-Drummer hears her. She narrows her eyes, her mouth pinching. “We gonna have a problem here?”

Karen shakes her head, aware of how panicked she must look, the wideness of her eyes, the heat spread across her cheeks. “N-no, no,” she stammers. “I just. Didn’t know you were – uh, together.”

“Right,” Trish says, shaking her head. “I totally thought I’d told you. I’m sorry, Karen.” She taps herself on the forehead with the heel of her palm. “Karen Page, meet Jessica Jones, my girlfriend.” 

“Um, hi.” Karen offers her hand. Her stomach is curled around her spine. She feels so fucking stupid.

Jessica stares. Trish nudges Jessica while taking a sip of her coffee.

They shake hands. Jessica’s grip is so strong Karen thinks she might bruise. 

“You really did play a good show,” Karen says, trying to recover this conversation. Her piece for the _AltTrish_ blog had been a glowing review of The Defenders’ performance, along with a little background on The Chaste, and what it’s like to be a girl who doesn’t look like everyone else at a punk show. (If Trish is going to give her the license to go a little Gonzo, she’ll take it.)

“Thanks for the photo of Danny,” Jessica returns, snatching Trish’s coffee from her and taking a sip. “I love material for future blackmail.”

Trish sighs, but Jessica’s dryness makes the corner of Karen’s mouth twitch. The photo of Danny she’d included was the one of him shirtless, exposing his large (and honestly shitty) chest tattoo to the crowd. “Call it professional courtesy,” Karen says, running a hand through her hair. “Old journalistic art, getting dirt on the rich. Like kung-fu.”

Jessica snorts, her mouth turning up in a gleeful smile. “Oh I _like_ her,” she says to Trish. “Where’d you find her?”

“Dying slowly in digital at _AltPress_ ,” Karen answers.

“We’re working on getting Karen onto bigger and better,” Trish says, a note of warmth in her voice that Karen doesn’t expect or think she deserves. Her flush returns in earnest and she ducks her head.

“Good,” Jessica replies. “I’d read her shit. Better than all of that crap.” She gestures to the papers in Karen’s hands.

“This is _The Times_ and _The Washington Post_ ,” Karen says, a little affronted. These are _titans_ of journalism. _The Post_ even changed their motto to _Democracy dies in darkness_ in January. She’d literally commit murder in a dirty warehouse to work for either paper.

Jessica shrugs, taking another drink from Trish’s coffee before her girlfriend plucks it back.

“Don’t you have band practice to be at, instead of harassing my employees?” Trish says, voice curled up in fondness. Karen looks away, down at her shoes, suddenly feeling as though she’s intruding.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jessica mutters. She’s all smiles when she stretches up to catch Trish’s mouth with her own. Karen looks away again, quickly.

“Keep up the kung-fu, Page,” Jessica says as she walks past Karen.

 

* * *

 

 Karen doesn’t know how long she’s been looking at this audio file, clipping out micro-pauses between Kate Bishop’s sentences for _smoothness_ , but she thinks her fingers are permanently frozen over _command-t_. It’s dark now, in her office, the only light the glow of her computer screen.

It’s then, when she reaches for her desk lamp, that she spares a look at the time. The light from her screen makes her temples ache. _8:00 PM._

“Great,” Karen mutters. She’s been editing this interview for eight hours and made it through two hours of audio. She pushes her hands through her hair and cradles the back of her neck between her palms. She really shouldn’t have lied about being proficient in Audacity and GarageBand. Fuck.

“You okay?” Trish calls from her side of the office. Her door is open, yellow light streaming into the open space where Karen’s desk is pressed next to a window, recording studio in front of her.

At least she’s not the only workaholic.

“Yeah,” she calls back. But Trish is already up. Karen can hear the sound of her footfalls, coming close. “I’m good. I didn’t mean to stay – I’m sorry.”

Trish shrugs. “I don’t care,” she says. Her blond curls bounce as she shakes her head. “Just make sure you put in for the overtime.”

Karen gapes and wonders how the fuck she got this job. 

“ _But_ ,” Trish continues, her mouth turning up into a smile that seems all the brighter thanks to her pink lipstick, “if you’d rather not spend your night here, I’m heading out to Jess’s show at The Safehouse, if you wanna come.”

The invitation feels – almost too good to be true. Karen’s been living in the city since January; since she started at _AltPress_ and since she’d finished moving her parents into their new condo in Florida at Christmas. Aside from the first few AltPress employee meet-and-greets (which were unmitigated disasters, ranging from someone asking her about her family to Karen drinking alone while everyone else did karaoke), she hasn’t been _invited_ anywhere.

She grabs on like a lifeline, other concerns (such as rules about hanging out with her boss, or the fact that she doesn’t even really _like_ punk music) be damned.  

“Yeah, sure,” she breathes, too fast. “Let me just get my bag –” Karen’s already pushing up from her desk, saving her work with two fingers while scooping up her steno book, phone, and keys in her other hand.

“No rush,” Trish says, easy, oblivious to Karen’s overeager joy. “It’s just a few blocks.”

Karen slings her tote over her shoulder before checking to make sure her hair’s still in its bun. (It’s been more than hot – the last few days have been a _city humid_ Karen’s never experienced, where the streets reek of garbage and everything sticks to her.)

She tosses her necessities into the front pocket of her bag and looks up at Trish. “Where is it?” 

“Old warehouse space by the docks,” Trish says, her blue eyes zeroing in on Karen’s feet. Karen’s own gaze drops to Trish’s. She’s wearing canvas boots, worn down at the heels and sneaker-bottomed. Karen’s eyes track to her own low heels. “Do you want to borrow some shoes or stop at home –”

“I’m good,” she says, reminding herself to be _nice_. She knows, objectively, that Trish means well by asking. But, just like the guy at The Chaste, she’s assuming Karen can’t handle herself.

Trish’s concern, at least, feels heartfelt. “I’ll just hang at the bar,” Karen insists. “Really. I’ll be fine.”

Trish shrugs, defeated. “Your feet, I guess,” she says, jingling her office keys. “C’mon, I don’t wanna miss Jess’s set.”

Karen’s not exactly sure what she expected when she heard _old warehouse_ and _The Safehouse_ in reference to one another, but she still finds herself surprised when they come to stop at what literally looks like a turn of the century shipping warehouse, complete with beams in the ceilings, industrial doors, and arched glass windows that are missing more than a few panes. Plastered to the old brick exterior are advertisements for shows, Food Not Bombs programs, a labor union or two. Topping it all off is a large mural that reads _THE TRUTH MUST BE TAKEN. THE REVOLUTION WILL BE LIVESTREAMED._

Inside, The Safehouse is crowded and hotter than the city itself. Karen can make out makeshift walls comprised of various materials: some plaster and drywall, some just curtains, hanging where walls might be. The bar itself is constructed from what looks like recycled pieces of sheet metal, partly covered in old graffiti. There’s a card table at the door, with a skinny kid running the cash box and stamping hands.

“ID?”

Karen’s head jerks up at his question. She’s greeted with a face so full of metal she has to blink to register the guy’s features as human. His hair spikes in every direction and he’s wearing a leather vest, studded collar and shoulders glinting in the low light.

He smiles affably, “Gotta check it so we can keep our liquor license, sorry.” He shrugs, as if to say, _what’re you gonna do?_ His eyes are warm, friendly.

She shakes her head to force herself into action, trying to reconcile Faceful of Steel with the kind voice and welcoming eyes that accompany it. “Yeah, yeah,” she breathes, tugging her wallet from the front pocket of her tote. Karen offers her driver’s license up to him.

He’s methodical about checking it, doesn’t fold it too hard, but withdraws a blacklight from his pocket and checks for the hologram. Professional. 

Karen’s leg starts to shake anyway. She tells herself that she’s far from home, far enough that no one would know, looking at her name or her face. There’s no way anyone could know –

“Cool,” he says, handing her ID back to her.

She exhales. “Thanks,” Karen murmurs, returning it to her wallet.

A hand lays on her shoulder and Karen spooks – not as bad she could have, but her muscles lock and her internal alarms go off for a brief, horrible second until she hears the sound of Trish’s voice: “She’s with me, Dave.”

“ _Spacker_ Dave,” the guy – _Spacker Dave_ , Karen presumes – corrects, good-natured smile and all. “Good to see you, Trish. ID?”

Trish’s hand drops from Karen’s shoulder to fish identification from her bag. Karen focuses on remembering how to breathe before Trish carts her off to the bar, where they’ll watch The Defenders’ set.

The venue’s already crowded, too crowded to try and fight their way to the front. And, as Trish tells her, this is the best spot to wait for Jessica anyway.

This time, The Defenders’ set feels different. Maybe it’s that Karen’s watching it from afar, but she thinks it has more to do with the people. The crowd tonight is large, but it’s more than that. They’re moving faster, harder than they did at the Chaste. The band is playing to match.

Though, Karen notes, Matt’s knees are locked. He stays rooted to one spot, his red glasses reflecting the stage lights. Meanwhile, Danny Rand practically skips around the stage – not only climbing on top of Jessica’s drumset, but pushing into Matt’s space, tugging the mic away from him to sing the chorus.

Matt, to his credit, laughs. Karen doesn’t know what to make of his performance – he doesn’t flirt with the crowd like Danny does, doesn’t banter with Luke or Jessica. But he’s still smiling. Karen catches the lines of his face tilt up under the lights when he bends over his guitar to play the intro to a song she thinks is called _Nightmare_ (she hasn’t listened to their demo since she looked it up last month). Karen can’t help feeling intrigued by the dynamic.

Her questions about The Defenders’ onstage physicality are answered almost immediately after their set ends and Trish calls Jessica’s name into the crowd, Karen craning her neck to catch sight of them. “And Matt, hey!” Trish adds, eyes finding them before Karen’s.

Trish throws her arms around Jess. Karen feels herself flush, the sensation of intruding returning, same as the other day. Her eyes desperately search for something else, a distraction, anything – which is how her gaze lands on Matt.

“Hey, you must be Matt, right?” she asks, when he doesn’t say anything. He’s still wearing those glasses – which. Okay, maybe he thinks they’re cool. (They were onstage, at least. In real life? It’s kind of a weird choice. But. Karen’s not one to judge, she supposes.) His fingers tap on the bartop.

“Yes, of course,” Trish breathes, untangling from her girlfriend at the sound of Karen’s voice. Trish touches Matt’s arm. “Matt, this is Karen Page, my intern.”

When Trish and Jess slide apart, Karen’s able to get a full look at him. Dark skinny jeans, a sweaty t-shirt that’s old enough to have thin holes running along the collar - and a long white and red cane in the hand that’s not wrapped around the edge of the bar. 

Oh, _fuck_. That’s why he’s wearing the glasses. And why he doesn’t move around stage. Karen feels like an idiot. She’s blushing, unable to stop herself, and ducks her head, letting her hair fall like a curtain.

Even if he can’t _see_ her. Because Matt is blind.

“Hi,” he says. Karen looks up from the toes of her pumps. He’s smiling, a grin spread wide across his mouth. He has dimples, deep enough to be seen through the stubble dusting his cheeks and jaw. His hair is tossed, a warm auburn. The hand that’s not wrapped around his cane reaches out to her. 

Right. Karen snaps her hand out and shakes it. “Hi,” she replies, forcing herself to remember how words work. “You had a great show.” That’s manners. Points for the not-quite charm school lessons her grandmother made her sit through, ages five to seven.

“Thanks,” Matt says, chuckling a little, gracious. She notices how he ducks his head, just slightly.

Before she’s forced to fill the silence, Jessica barks her name. “Karen?”

“Oh –” Karen’s gaze tears off Matt towards Jessica, who’s leaning against the bar next to her. The bartender is looking expectantly between her and Karen - she’s ordering drinks. “Uh, sure,” Karen says, nodding a little. She tucks her hair behind her ear and shifts her weight, leaning her hip against the edge of the bar. 

“Four, then,” Jessica says to the bartender, who’s already reaching for a bottle of whiskey, liquid dark under the low lights. Karen braces herself – she’s not much for dark liquor, but she’ll drink anything that’s free. (And she’s not about to let Jessica Jones know she’s nervous. Karen knows better.)

“Thanks,” Karen says, when the bartender sets the last whiskey down in front of her. She takes a sip.

Jessica’s glass slams down on the bartop. It’s empty. “Don’t mention it.”

Karen looks away when Jessica catches her staring, putting her gaze squarely back on her own drink – which she begins to nurse.

There’s another pause, the sound of music on the PA dulled by the chatter of the crowd, before Matt speaks again. “Did you get what you needed for your piece?”

She’s halfway through giving him a confused look when she remembers he’s not going to _see_ her brow furrowing. It’s another hyper-second before she figures out he means the piece she did on his band last month. 

“Yeah,” she says, nodding as she sets her whiskey down. “I, um, was at The Chaste a few months ago, for you guys.” She fiddles with her glass, leaning it along the bottom rim. “You were very good. Then. And tonight.”

 _Jesus Christ, Page, get it together._ She’d wanted go out. Shouldn’t she be better at this? Shouldn’t she be making a joke, or adding something to the loud and animated conversation Jessica and Trish are having? Shouldn’t she be jumping at the chance to talk to Matt – cute, musician Matt – to flirt with him over their whiskey?

Matt chuckles again. He’s sheepish, shrugging slightly as he takes the compliment. “Thanks,” he says, before raising his glass to his mouth. His fingers play absently with the end of his cane.

Karen’s quiet for a beat, realizing all too slowly that her eyes are lingering on Matt’s cane. She feels herself begin to blush again, and speaks before she can stop herself. “When you played,” Karen starts, “I didn’t know you were, ah –” 

 _Shit_ , that sounds terrible. Karen shuts herself up quickly. 

But all Matt does is laugh, a little louder now. He tilts his head towards her. “Blind?” he finishes for her, leaning his cane to his side.

Karen winces before sighing. Well, it’s out now. “Uh, yeah,” she admits, with another heavy exhale. She can feel her shoulders begin to drop down. He’s not chewing her a new asshole. If anything – which, Karen’s not exactly proud to admit it, but he’s hard to read with the glasses shielding his eyes – he looks… amused. “I thought the glasses were a sartorial choice,” she adds, embarrassment still scraping against her throat.

He replies first with another laugh, this one full and loud, his head tossing back with the force of it. It’s – endearing. “You wouldn’t be the first,” Matt says, grinning back at her.

Before Karen can discern a way to reply, however, she’s spared by another voice calling, joyous, “Matt!”

Her head turns at the sound – Karen just barely notices the sharp way Matt’s head tilts, sharply isolated from the stillness of the rest of his body, like a predatory bird listening from above – and her gaze lands on another guy around Matt’s age, with long blonde hair that’s pulled into a messy, loose bun at the crown of his head, beer in one hand. His round cheeks are tilted up in a big smile, green eyes brightly fixed on Matt, who turns his head to smile in reply. 

“Hey, Foggy,” Matt greets, just as the newcomer – _Foggy_ – snakes an arm around Matt’s waist for a one-armed embrace. Matt’s arm drops around the guy’s shoulders. His smile is wide at the arrival of Foggy, perfect triangles of black at the corners of his grin reaching up towards his eyes.

Foggy immediately zeroes in on Karen when he pulls back from his embrace with Matt. He flashes her a dimply smile. “Hey!” he says, friendly, “I’m Foggy.” 

“Karen,” she replies, extending her hand towards him. He’s so affable that for a beat, Karen forgets that she doesn’t remember how to do this. Long-suppressed muscle memory kicks in. Foggy’s grip is sure, just as warm as his voice. His nails are painted, a shimmering navy blue. “You’re friends with Matt?” she asks as she withdraws her hand, wrapping both around her whiskey glass.

“The very best,” Foggy replies, a deep note of pride folded into his voice when he speaks. Karen is struck by it, moved to silence for a beat. Foggy seizes the moment, his gaze taking in her face before he says, blinking once and grinning in recognition, “You’re the reporter. From the show at The Chaste! That was a good feature.”

As Karen blushes – no one has _ever_ talked to her about her work before, not like this. She notices Matt frown, head tilting towards Foggy. “I didn’t know you listened to –” he starts.

“Of course I did, you idiot, your band was on it,” Foggy cuts him off, fondly dismissive before continuing, “Trish said you’re from Vermont? How do you like New York?”

Karen’s throat dries up. _Shit, shit, shit – be cool, Karen._ She nods, tucking her hair behind her ears before breathing out. “Thank you,” she says – she means it despite the panic at the base of her spine.

She swallows and forces herself to continue. _Make conversation, c’mon._ “Uh, yeah,” she says, “I graduated from UVM last June. It’s –” she stops mid sentence. Last summer. She swallows and swirls her glass in her hands, considering the whiskey at the bottom. She wants to down it all – but she knows how that would look.

_Talk about something else. Anything else._

“Nice, so far,” Karen finishes, pivoting to a half-truth about her experience in New York. “I like the Kitchen. But it can be…” She sighs, trying to find the words. “Hard to meet people, you know?”

_Great, Karen, now you sound pathetic._

Foggy’s reply, however, is bright and immediate: “Well now you know me and Matt!” He flashes her another smile. “So that’s good, right?” 

That surprises a breathless laugh out of her. It’s such an unexpected and _kind_ thing to say – she doesn’t know how she’s walked into this conversation, but it’s igniting a flicker of something like _hope_ in Karen’s chest, and she wants to grab it with both hands. “Yeah,” she says, the corner of her mouth tilting up in a smile.

Foggy opens his mouth to say something else, but he’s cut off by the sharp, dissonant sound of guitar feedback. All conversation in The Safehouse stops, immediately. Karen’s head whips around to the source of the sound. The entire warehouse seems to have stilled in this half-second. Even the very nucleus of the crowd is unmoving, eyes glued to the stage.

Every sighted person’s eyes lock on the four figures onstage. A tall woman with wild, bright red hair - a dangerous red, the color of emergency exits - adjusts her guitar (black, flecked with white paint and a design Karen can’t quite make out on the head). Another, stockier woman - this one with short, dark hair and an abused looking bass sporting a sticker which reads _THIS MACHINE KILLS_ along the body - laughs maniacally at something the drummer says as they take a seat behind a kick drum labelled appropriately: _BANG!_ in cartoonish font. The drummer’s thick, coke bottle glasses catch the stage lights, casting sharp shadows in their curly hair, barely contained in a topknot.

The fourth figure has no instrument at all. His head is bowed, and he’s walking up the narrow stage’s lip with predatory precision, pulling the mic stand offstage. He deposits it in the farthest corner he can reach. Black ink covers his knuckles, illegible from Karen’s distance. He winds the auxiliary cable the mic’s attached to around his wrist once. Twice. His gait has a lurch to it, but his steps are careful, laying out the cord so it doesn’t twist while he returns to center stage. 

A biting, painful guitar note cuts through the humid air. Karen barely breathes in before the drums start. Furious. Heavy.

It happens fast.

The note changes, the bass slams in. It’s louder than anything Karen’s ever, _ever_ heard. Louder than a handgun. Louder than her father’s hunting rifle. The feral speed fills Karen’s ears.

It fills the crowd’s too, because as soon as the song starts the pit _explodes_ like someone’s stepped on a landmine. Bodies pitch and writhe, a gruesome tangle of limbs – but Karen’s not watching the crowd.

Instead, her eyes desperately scan for the source of the savage, _brutal_ scream that comes two bars into the song. The noise is absolutely unintelligible. Karen’s entire chest aches like she’s been body slammed to the floor.

Above the crowd, the fourth member of the band lifts his head.

The bruises are different – one, ugly and purple, spreads at the corner of his jaw. There’s another, a perfect counterpoint, on his left temple. His top lip looks like it’s been split.

Karen knows that nose, though. The wide, slightly crooked set of it – broken and reset too many times. It’s the asshole from The Chaste.

Though she’s loath to admit it, she’d spent hours muttering angrily to herself as she set to work developing her photos, after coming home from the show. _Who the_ fuck _does that asshole think he is?_ had been the general theme.

Apparently, that asshole is _this_ , screaming, raw, ugly –

The entire room fills with the sound of matched fury, the crowd shouting with him: “ _I’ll paint this town blood red tonight. Erase this scum from my fucking sight_.”

The music repeats itself, ripping through the air, again and again. Karen feels her head bob in time, but she’s barely aware of the reflex, suddenly more than her body. _Bigger_ than her body.

And then – it stops. The music cuts. No one says anything.

The guy, the fucking guy, drags his eyes over the crowd. There’s this dead, absent look in him – his jaw hangs, slightly. His chest heaves.

Karen’s not part of the city – not like some of her fellow interns at _AltPress_. The ones who complain about their bagels or their favorite mixologist not working at the best bar downtown anymore. Karen – despite every inch of her that has tried to resist it – is still a girl who grew up in the woods.

And she knows something dangerous when she sees it.

“Kill,” the guy says, slow, just as gravelly as that night at The Chaste, “the fucking. Lights.”

The Safehouse goes dark, still silent, still transfixed on _the fucking guy from The goddamn Chaste_.

Karen doesn’t breathe.

Guitar and kick drum resume. The guitar is jagged, fractured. The kick drum’s beat unadorned – marching orders. She still can’t see a single thing.

Then, bass and hi-hats. As the bassist cuts her note, the lights flash in time with the bassline and the crash of the cymbals. Once. Twice. Three times.

The lights stay on, and the song explodes outward once more – the guy screaming, the instruments in a furious race to the death. Karen’s heart racing desperately to keep up. She watches the singer disappear and reappear as he nearly doubles over in time with his screams. She can’t take her eyes off him, or the absence of him when he vanishes from her sight.

When the song ends, Karen’s ears are ringing. She’s still somewhere outside her body. She’s in the particles of the air, zapping around the warehouse like sparks of electricity. Karen’s vaguely aware of Foggy leaning in – the faint smell of Natty Light, hemp soap – as he says something to her.

She replies, but has no idea what she says. Instead, she’s watching the singer, who’s now standing extremely still in the middle of the stage. His chest is heaving, fists at his sides, one clutching the microphone like a knife. The band strikes up another song: a drum roll, the bassist playing a few notes.

He moves fast; Karen barely catches the flash of metal as he swings the mic high into the air, pivoting so his wide shoulders are turned toward the crowd. With his back to them, he catches the mic cord on his neck, letting it wrap around his throat once before snatching the swinging mic with one hand. He _moans_ , lifting the mic as he does.

It makes the veins in his neck pop into sharp relief. Karen’s fingers itch for charcoal.

The bass and guitar wail and he bends down again, groaning in a lower register now. When he comes back up, his neck is free of the black cable and he’s singing – if Karen could call it that – again, “ _I can’t breathe with the radio on._ ”

When their set ends - almost too fucking fast for Karen to track, the singer lost in the flurry of bodies that rush the stage during their final song only to hurtle themselves back into the pit, the entire warehouse crying _murdered fascists make no promises!_ \- Karen’s still rooted to her spot with her back to the bar, forgotten whiskey clasped in one hand.

“Shit, Trish, you warn the kid before you brought her here?” Jessica’s voice, dry, cuts through the ringing in Karen’s ears.

Karen doesn’t _jump_. She doesn’t. She just – turns her head quickly.

“You good, blondie?” Jess asks, one dark eyebrow raised.

“What _was_ that?” she demands in reply. Karen’s still searching past Jess and Trish’s shoulders, looking for what happened to the band, _the guy_ , what the _fuck_ –

“Leatherneck,” Trish answers. “Not usually my thing, but Jess wanted –”

“That was insane,” Karen interrupts. She can’t help it. She’s replaying the entire set over in her head. What the _hell_? “That was – crazy. Impossible. That was –”

“That was Frank Castle,” Jess finishes. “You really haven’t heard them before? They’ve been around for like. Ten years.”

“I – _no_ ,” Karen says, emphatic. “I didn’t really, uh, I’m not –”

“I won’t tell _AltPress_ you’re not a punk fan,” Trish says, offering Karen an easy smile, despite the look of surprised embarrassment that begins to pull across Karen’s features. Trish laughs. “I read your clips. I wasn’t joking when I said we were going to get you to bigger and better.”

It’s almost too much for Karen to process. Her mind spins, stuck on the twisted-up sound of Leatherneck’s frontman snarling into the microphone. Karen’s thoughts run at a different speed than her heart, touched by the kindness afforded to her by _Trish Walker_ , of all people. She feels – dizzy.

No, it’s definitely too much for her to process. “I –” she starts, blinking once, twice, before she sets her abandoned glass of whiskey down on the bar. “Thank you,” she says to Trish, minding her manners as she readjusts her bag on her shoulder. “I’ll, ah, see you Monday?” Karen says, as a goodbye. She doesn’t mean for it to be a question, but that’s how it comes out, because she can’t catch her fucking breath.

She has to go. Now.

Karen has questions. But more importantly, she has a name.

Frank Castle.

 

* * *

 

 “You want to do _what_ column with Frank Castle?”

Mitchell Ellison, editor in chief for _Noisey_ , gives Karen a long, withering look over his glasses. Honestly, it’s the fact that he’s most concerned about Karen’s pitch _itself_ \- as opposed to how she’s delivering it in person after basically storming into the Vice offices (much to the annoyance of the nineteen year-old intern acting as Ellison’s secretary) - that makes Karen _really_ want him to say yes.

She could have been slapped with a trespassing charge for the way she’d more or less forced herself in the door, she realizes, now that her heart rate isn’t pushing 140 beats per minute. 

Instead, she’s just got to prove to this one man why he should let her interview Frank Castle for his website. It’s simple.

A total piece of cake.

“‘I went on a date’,” Karen says, perfunctory. “The one where –”

“Listen,” Ellison interrupts, waving both hands. “I’m not just going to greenlight eight hundred words on your high school fantasy of dating a guy who has literally _put people in the hospital_. Work out that particular kink on your own time –”

“It’s _not_ a high school fantasy!” Karen snaps back, her breath rattling as she inhales. Her words are loud enough that they vibrate the glass walls of his ‘office’. (If you could call it that – to Karen it looks like a cage, barely separating him from the shared workspace of the rest of _Noisey’s_ staff.) Stupid, fucking, patriarchal – “First of all, how old do you think I _am_? Jesus Christ, Ellison, I graduated _college_ last June –”

“– And Castle’s been in a band for ten years –”

“Exactly! Frank Castle’s _never_ been interviewed and he’s been a frontman for _ten years_ , Ellison. Don’t you think that’s a little odd? And Vice’s whole _thing_ is putting people outside of their comfort zone, right? Wouldn’t interviewing him for a column like this be the very _definition_ of what you’re trying to do here?”

Karen’s chest heaves. A little.

Ellison’s eyebrows remain poised, one arched high above the other. “Well, didn’t you just say it yourself?” he replies. “Frank Castle doesn’t _talk_. He doesn’t do interviews.” He shrugs, gives her another dismissive hand wave. “None of them do.”

“Castle will talk,” Karen says, nodding. “He will. To me.”

He’s going to. She’ll get him on record.

Or crash and burn rather spectacularly trying, but. Karen’s not going to consider that option.

Ellison – for once – doesn’t have a quick reply. Instead, he regards Karen carefully. She feels a bit like she’s being sized up. Karen sucks in a breath, digs her heels in, and makes sure she’s standing at her tallest. She arches an eyebrow back at him, daring him to disagree with her.

He sighs and slumps forward. “Two weeks,” he says, defeated. “That’s as much as I can give you. We’ll talk about pay when you show me the interview. I’m not promising anything until I know you can deliver.”

“Fine,” Karen snaps back. It’s not about the money anyway. Asshole. “You have a press email for Marvel?”

Ellison snorts. “You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that,” he says, half to himself, and reaches for the pad of Post-Its on his desk. He jots down an email and waves the yellow paper in front of her.

Karen snatches it. “Thanks.” 

“Don’t thank me yet,” Ellison replies. “You’ve still got to get him to say yes.”

 

* * *

 

 

 **To:** nat@marvel.com  
**From:** kpage@altpress.com  
**Sub:** Interview Request – Frank Castle

Good afternoon, Ms. Romanoff,

My name is Karen Page. I’m a reporter for AltPress and Noisey/Vice, looking to do an interview with Frank Castle for one of our profile series. Would it be possible to set something up with him? My deadline is two weeks from today, July 3. I’d like to meet with him sooner than later, in case there are follow-up questions.

I’m available by phone or email to set up the interview. Let me know what works for Castle’s schedule.

Thanks in advance.

Karen Page  
Production Assistant, AltTrish

 

 **To:** kpage@altpress.com  
**From:** nat@marvel.com  
**Sub:** Re: Interview Request – Frank Castle

Leatherneck is not accepting interview requests at this time.

Regards,

Natasha Romanoff  
PR and Marketing, Marvel Records

 

 **To:** nat@marvel.com  
**From:** kpage@altpress.com  
**Sub:** Re: Re: Interview Request

Ms. Romanoff,

Leatherneck has a song titled “I Am Going To Kill The President of the United States of America.” It’s 2017. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume Mr. Castle’s going to have a busy three and a half years ahead of him. I think that should be covered by a platform such as Vice.

Please let me know when he’s available.

Karen Page  
Production Assistant, AltTrish

 

* * *

 

She blows two days exchanging terse emails with Ellison’s press contact, then trying to find a goddamn phone number for Romanoff (or anyone so much as _loosely_ affiliated with Leatherneck, for that matter). When she calls The Safehouse, the voicemail is full, the outgoing message simply _“If you’re looking for someone, we don’t know them.”_

Marvel isn’t going to help; The Safehouse is a bust.

But Karen’s not about to give up. The Chaste’s website says there’s some band playing for a _Thirsty Thursday_ special and, well. It may be a slim chance she’ll see him running the soundboard again, but Karen doesn’t think The Chaste has the kind of money to have a full sound staff. It’s worth a try.

She ducks out of work earlier than usual on Thursday – leaving the _AltTrish_ office on time for the first time in the two and a half months she’s worked there.

It doesn’t take long for her to get there. It’s four-thirty, and there’s a different bartender this time. A woman, but not Claire. She’s shorter, with close cropped hair.

Karen doesn’t stop at the bar, however. Her heels click on the slightly-sticky linoleum as she cuts a path straight to where, _thank fuck_ , Frank Castle’s standing by the stage, one foot on the edge of it, knee bent. One hand holds a pair of pliers, another a fistful of wiring. He’s scowling at the inside of an amplifier.

“Frank Castle?” Karen calls, stopping two feet away from him.

He looks up.  

The bruising from last week is starting to age spectacularly. Putrid yellows and greens curl at the sharp angle of his jaw, the shape of the bruise oddly delicate, embossed on Castle’s hard edges. This close, Karen can see an odd little scar high on the right side of his forehead, put in sharp relief by his closely shaved hair.

His tawny eyes narrow when they lock on her. He doesn’t speak as he looks her up and down, and Karen doesn’t budge, despite the curl of frustration she feels when he studies her – just like he did in May.

She forces herself to speak. “I’m Karen Page.”

“Huh,” Castle grunts.

“I saw your set last week at The Safehouse.”

“Huh,” he says again, glancing at the air over her head and then back at the stage.

Karen has to nail her voice down, to keep it level. She won’t be fucking deterred by his Frankenstein’s monster act. “I’m working on a story for Vice and I’d like to talk to you about your career,” she finishes.

“Huh.” _Christ_ , she’s going to kill him. He tosses the pliers onto the stage. They clatter. Karen clenches her jaw and doesn’t let herself flinch at the noise.

“What’s the story?” he asks, dropping his foot from the stage’s edge. His voice is husky. He doesn’t speak loudly, which Karen wishes didn’t surprise her, but it does. Castle’s face reveals nothing.

“A profile piece,” she replies. She’s not about to fucking tell him she pitched the _First Dates_ column. It’s just the column she thought she had the best chance of getting into. “On you.”

He turns his head, pushing the sleeves of his black sweatshirt up his forearms. His gaze shifts between Karen and the guts of the amplifier for a moment, focus slipping over her shoes, her skirt, the bag slung over her shoulder. She gets a slight sense of being itemized, but more rankling is the vagueness of Castle’s attention. He’s looking _through_ her as much as he’s looking _at_ her, and Karen barely reins in the urge to duck her head, make Castle meet her eyes.

“You’re barkin’ up the wrong tree, ma’am,” he says, eventually, pulling on the wires in his hand. Bending, he goes back to inspecting the innards of the amp he’s performing extremely intensive surgery on, apparently, and Karen takes a deep breath. Her eyes bore into the side of his skull.

Karen doesn’t stamp her foot. But it’s a close thing – she scuffs the toe of her pump against the dirty floor. “Actually,” she starts, “I uhm –"  _dammit_ – “I think there’s more to the story. If you’re interested.”

Castle’s reaction is minuscule, but she _sees it_ , she sees the subtle bob of his head when she starts to speak. So she tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and continues, “Do you know how many people tweeted a song of yours last November? I do. You’re a – symbol. To a lot of people, Mr. Castle.”

He pauses for half a second before twisting something inside the amp, tugging out a wire. It’s an angry motion.

Karen tries to keep going. “You’ve been doing this a long time–“

“I ain’t a symbol, lady.” Castle cuts her off, setting down the pliers and picking up another tool, something that looks like pliers with teeth. He grips a red wire in his left hand, starts using the tool to rip the red tubing from the copper hidden inside with his right.

Karen watches for a moment, taking a deep breath. She hears someone laugh from the general direction of the bar. A door slams. Castle seems prepared to ignore her until she walks away.

Karen doesn’t walk away. 

“I was at The Safehouse,” she says, concentrating on the memory. It keeps her tone steady, reminds her exactly why she’s here. “I told you, I _saw_ it. Leatherneck’s energy, _your_ energy, the _crowd’s_ , you. You don’t do that for a living without a reason. You don’t play like that, and you don’t write the way you write, if you don’t give a shit!”

Her voice gets a little louder there at the end than Karen had initially intended. When she stops, it’s utterly silent between them. Castle’s staring at her, and she feels herself flush.

Fuck. She hates this place. This infuriating, familiar moment.

Investing herself in something, getting, as her parents might say, _carried away_. The looks on people’s faces, when she raises her voice, doesn’t smile, doesn’t defer. When she’s not _nice_ to be around.

Or, worse, when her intensity is seen as entertaining; as _novel_. The faces of boys flash before her, telling her how cute she is when she gets riled up. Those shit-eating grins, teasing hands, pinching at her sides. The smiles slipping from their faces when she shoves them off, her nails catching their skin. Or when she stomps on their feet hard enough to feel something crunch. All very unbecoming of a young lady.

And now, Karen can’t tell if the crinkles at the corners of Castle’s eyes are there because he’s sizing her up, or laughing at her. Maybe both.

She raises her chin, just slightly, and refuses to look away.

“Huh.” Castle says, finally.

For a moment, Karen pictures, vividly, her fist colliding with his nose. The structural integrity’s clearly been compromised already, she could probably break it pretty easily, she thinks, before Castle continues, “You got a card?”

Karen’s brain stops and starts, her thoughts jolting like some sort of psychic hiccup. _Fuck_. Okay. No, she doesn’t. But she has a pen and paper.

Frank Castle says he’ll get back to her within a couple days. Karen believes him.

She can’t wait to see the look on Ellison’s face.

 

* * *

 

She’s working on editing the audio for a segment of Trish’s next show when her phone rings. Not the office one, that she forgets she has – her cellphone, sharp default ringtone filling the empty office space.

Karen jumps for it, frowning when she doesn’t recognize the number. People don’t _have_ her number, don’t call her. The only person who calls her is her mom and she hasn’t spoken to her in a month –

“This is Page,” she breathes, cradling the phone against her cheek.

Frank Castle’s rasp greets her. “Alright,” he says, no hello, no small talk. “July 12, you’ll get your interview.”

Karen doesn’t leap for her planner. She grabs it enthusiastically, moving quickly enough that she accidentally presses play on the clip she’s been editing and flails to stop it, muttering curses as she does.

Castle snorts on the other end. “Everything alright, ma’am?”

Her face heats, the fact that he’s on the other end of a phone call notwithstanding. “Fine,” she snaps back, flipping open her planner. July 12. “Wednesday, then,” Karen confirms, trying to force back the flush crawling up her neck. “What time?”

“Ain’t you supposed to have that figured out?” he returns, caustic. “You tell me where and when an’ I’ll be there.”

Karen grinds her teeth and tries to think of a place to interview Frank Castle.

She’d assured Ellison she’d get her own photographs, so she’ll need a place with decent lighting. And if she sets up the interview in early or mid afternoon, then she’ll get plenty of natural light, it’s just – _where?_  She doesn’t go places. She knows The Chaste and The Safehouse, both places she’d rather not go with him, and…

Karen wracks her brain.

The diner, her parents took her to when they’d come up her first weekend living in the city. With the long wall of windows. She tries to imagine Castle there, in the old school booth, the look of his bruised knuckle tattoos against a formica tabletop.

“Lou’s Diner at noon work for you?”

“Said I’d be there.” Castle replies.

“Great,” Karen says, deciding to ignore his taciturn tone. “If there’s anything you need from me, don’t hesitate to ask.” It feels trite, but she says it. Just like she’d said _Mr. Castle_ at The Chaste. Manners.

“Yeah, you got it,” he says, pithy.

The line clicks. Castle’s hung up on her. She drops her head down between her knees and screams silently. Her insides feel too big for her chest. Castle’s agreed to the interview. It’s happening in two days. Thirty-four hours, give or take.

“Okay,” she whispers to herself. “Okay. Okay.” Karen steels herself for the rest of her night. Finish this audio. Call Ellison, tell him it’s on. 

Then she’s got to figure out how to get Frank Castle’s service record.

 

* * *

 

Karen is early for the interview. She’s sitting in the farthest corner of the diner, watching the door carefully. She’s not nervous.

She readjusts her pen on the tabletop. It’s next to her notebook, which is next to her recorder – not the voice memo app on her phone. This time, she’s prepared. Her camera is next to her right hand, on the table for Castle to see. He knows she’s a photographer. It shouldn’t surprise him.

The bell on the door jingles and Karen’s eyes dart up. It’s not Castle. Her watch reads _11:43_. She still isn’t nervous.

Castle walks into the diner at _11:59_. He’s wearing a black hoodie over a plain black baseball cap, slung low over his brow. Over the hoodie, the same dark gray field jacket she’s seen him in at The Chaste twice now. Dark jeans. Heavy, black combat boots add weight to his uneven gait.

 _In the middle of goddamn_ July _,_ Karen thinks, faintly at a loss. She feels a ripple of heat on her skin just looking at him, despite the air conditioning.

When the matronly waitress at the register offers him a greeting, Karen sees his mouth move, but doesn’t hear the hello.

Castle sits down across from her at _12:00_.

He scans the place before sitting. Then he nods at her, folding himself into the booth. As he settles he shrugs out of his jacket and pulls back the hood of his sweatshirt, but leaves the baseball cap on. His hands come up on the table, wrung together, forearms against the surface. Karen notes his right index finger steadily tapping against his knuckle.

There’s a radio playing, from somewhere in the back. Music flares every time the door to the kitchen swings open (which isn’t often, business being on the slow side). What few other occupied tables Karen sees are on the other side of the restaurant, snatches of one patron’s conversation mingling with muffled voices of the kitchen staff, glass clinking, the sound of meat frying.

“Good seat,” is the first thing he says to her, eyes landing on the table.

“Yeah?” Karen asks. She resists the urge to tuck her hair behind her ear - it’s not actually in her face, just something to do with her hands.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Quiet. Got an eye on the door.”

Castle looks up, staring at the wall over her shoulder for a long moment before his eyes land on hers.

But Karen’s gaze is elsewhere, surveying the damage.

His nose is an impressionistic painting of broken blood vessels, deep red and purple. The bruising stretches up and across one eyebrow. Other bruises, older, are decidedly faded in comparison, faintly green ghost marks at the edge of his jaw and temple.

Explains the hat, she supposes.

While she’s been studying him he’s been watching her, Karen realizes, the moment their eyes do meet. He’s wearing that same strange expression he had when she’d demanded this interview: brown eyes crinkled in the corner, something between amusement and study. 

“Maybe it’s not your first rodeo,” he finishes, rocking faintly in his seat. The corner of his mouth turns up, just then. Almost imperceptible, but Karen catches it. His face is a lesson in finespun shifts, and Karen takes a deep, quiet breath. It’s time to pay close attention.

The smile, the words. _Not your first rodeo_. They feel at odds with the gruff wariness she’s been treated with for the past month. Even more at odds with the fury she’d witnessed at The Safehouse.  

It draws a snort out of her, and she raises an eyebrow at him. “Maybe it’s not,” Karen says.

There’s a beat of silence, before his expression shutters again, jaw working. His tongue darts out against the corner of his mouth. “So, uh, how’s this work? I just start talkin’ or-”

Karen shakes her head. “First, I want to record this to make transcribing easier later. Do you consent to that?”

He wrinkles his nose and his eyes leave her face, gaze dropping to her recorder on the table. Then her notebook. Then the camera. Karen has to force herself to not look away from him. The tapping of his index finger speeds up, momentarily.

She braces for impact. 

Castle nods again. “Okay,” he says, his rocking slightly more pronounced. His eyes glance to the side, like he’s not allowing himself to look over his shoulder.

Karen notices. “Anytime you want to stop, just say the word and we stop,” she says, before she thinks better of it. Her voice is softer than she intends.

Castle grunts and the rocking slows. “You can ask your questions.”

Karen clicks on the recorder and opens her notebook. She has her questions written down. She looks at them, then back up at Castle. The bruises – both fading and new – seem to scream at her.

She sighs and rolls her pen under her thumb. “You know…” Karen starts. “Pretty much every person I spoke to about you told me I was crazy to try to do this.” She swallows and meets his eyes. “Why?”

Castle is quiet, hands stilling. His eyes aren’t wary, but they’re not entirely pleased either. Wide, maybe. Pupils twitching just as his gaze skitters across her face. He’s trying to interpret the question. Karen waits for him, somehow both very and not at all surprised by the long pause he takes before starting, “Because we do what everyone else can’t.”

It’s not what Karen expects, and she blinks in reply, jaw working. “And that is…”

“No platforming,” he offers. There’s a microscopic fold in his brow. “All the scumbags, the shitstains…we don’t work with ‘em. They ain’t ever gonna be welcome at our shows. We put ‘em down and they stay down.” His voice takes on an edge as he speaks, continuing, “I take pride in that.”

Karen feels the force of his words. “Scumbags?” she repeats, her hand jumping for her pen. _No platforming_. She writes it down without breaking eye contact. _Pride_. She looks down at the paper, underlines that.

“The real assholes.”

“Like who?”

“Rapists, racists, skins.” His tone is brusque, like this part should be self-evident, further explanation unnecessary.

She raises an eyebrow. “Skins?”

“Skinheads. Nazis. Get a couple at every other goddamn show,” he affirms, nodding. The tic in his index finger returns. “You gonna keep repeating everything I say like it’s a question?”

“N-no,” Karen replies, shaking her head. “I have to ask. For-” Castle’s gaze is intense, and Karen’s caught in the crosshairs. “Uhm,” she breathes, pushing her free hand through her hair. “For clarity.” Karen swallows. “What do you mean by ‘put down’?” 

“You were at a show,” Castle says. When his eyes are narrowed, it makes his cheekbones stand out in sharp relief. “What d’you think?”

That gives Karen pause. She thinks about the wild tangle of bodies, the wall of sound. The lyrics she’d looked up, after: _a murdered fascist makes no noise_. She swallows. “I think it means you’re effective,” she answers, quiet.

Castle tilts his head. Something seems to quirk up in his features, but it’s not his mouth.

Karen doesn’t know how long the silence between them lasts. Long enough that she doesn’t want to look at the time signature on her recorder. She clears her throat. “Uhm, so - Leatherneck is known for being very anti-establishment, critical of the government-”

Castle snorts.

Karen bites down on her tongue, hard, and forces herself to continue. “How much of that stems from the fact that you were shot in the head by another Marine while in Iraq?” 

He goes completely still for half a second, like a paused videotape, looking at Karen.

“Ma’am?” Castle asks, out of nowhere. His voice pitched a little louder, eyes still on Karen. Then his head turns abruptly, hand raised a few inches over the table, signaling someone.

A waitress – dark hair, maybe mid-fifties – steps to their booth. Her smile for Castle is thin, worn. Not unkind, but the particular variety of kindness that’s worth sub-minimum wage. “What can I getcha, hon?”

“Coffee. You?”

Karen blinks, realizes he’s looking back at her. “Yeah!” she says, a little too loud. As she nods, her hair slips into her eyes. Her ears heat. “Yes, please.”

The waitress smiles, turns back to Castle. “Anything else with that?”

Karen watches Castle smile back at her, lopsided and disarmingly amiable. “You know,” he starts, shifting in his seat, something small but unmistakable opening up in his demeanor. He’s not hunched over anymore, leaning back in the booth to talk to the waitress. “I’m gonna need about as much black coffee as this place can pump out, so just,” he raises his right index finger, traces a circle in the air, like a rotating wheel, “keep ‘em comin’. Thank you.”

The waitress’ smile renews itself, more genuine, laughter folded into the corner of her mouth.

When she’s gone, Castle meets Karen’s eyes again. His face is colored by the remnants of the smile he’d given the waitress. But his eyes are serious, glancing again at Karen’s notebook before he shifts, hunkers back down. Takes a sip of his coffee.

Back to business. 

“A lot of that, the writing. Came outta rehab, see. The things they have you do. Exercises.”

“Rehab. Because you’d sustained a head injury,” Karen encourages, voice soft.

“Right.” His brow pinches, more in thought than discomfort. If he’s surprised that she looked up his service record, he doesn’t linger on it long.

“And the exercises?” Karen prompts. 

Castle inhales through his nose, speaking on the exhale. “Playing cards. Art therapy.” He snorts at that, snide. “Lot of that shit didn’t take, with me. But they like making you write lists, take notes. Relearn how to keep things in order, develop memory, right?”

Frank is holding his mug in two hands, freshly bruised knuckles complimentary against the deep blue of the diner mug. Karen’s fingers twitch for her camera, eyes catching. His right thumb taps the handle once, twice, before raising the mug to his lips, taking a long drink before speaking.

“I always had a journal, before. It was...something familiar, you know,” Frank continues. The words come out of him in steady bursts, grouped tight. “Helps, getting some things out of your head. And that time in the hospital...didn’t have much to think about except what put me there.”

Karen’s forehead creases. “And what exactly is friendly fire? As far as I could find, there’s no official definition.” 

“That ain’t an accident,” Frank says. He waits a beat before adding, “‘A casualty circumstance applicable to persons either killed or wounded in action, either mistakenly or accidentally, by friendly forces actively engaged with the enemy, who are directing fire at a hostile force and/or what is thought to be a hostile force.’”

His tone is absent, rotely precise. It makes Karen’s stomach lurch.

She pushes past the sick feeling. Keeps going. “And what’s _your_ definition of friendly fire?”

Frank blinks at her, refocusing. There’s the barest twitch in the corner of one eye, as he considers Karen for a few seconds before looking away. It feels like a decision.

He takes two deep breaths, slow, before speaking again. “It sounds like I’m in a humvee,” he starts, voice low; rough. “It’s dark, I can’t see shit – not enough batteries for our thermals, only got the NGVs and an RTO that can’t shut up, even when we’re taking fire, the enemy on the other side. But I hear it – I _hear_ it. I hear the team leader in the humvee two klicks away, calling out what he’s spotted as enemy muzzle flash.” 

Frank’s eyes widen as he speaks. He rocks a little harder, fingers moving on the tabletop. His coffee sits on the counter next to his elbow, abandoned. Karen can’t breathe as Frank talks, his voice dropped to scarcely a whisper: “‘Cept I know those coordinates. ‘Cause they’re my muzzle flashes. It’s me, firing my MK18. Problem is, I don’t got the time to get on the radio and say, _hey, asshole_. ‘Cause in the time it’s taken me to pull my head out my ass, the bullet’s already through the window, cutting through my helmet.”

She can see him swallow. The roll in his throat. His hands drop, curving around his mug once more. “No such goddamn thing. That’s this marine’s definition of friendly fire.”

“Jesus Christ,” Karen exhales. 

They’ve been sat here all of ten minutes and she can’t remember what she was supposed to ask next. If she were to look away from Frank’s face – which looks blown out, like someone’s kicked up dust inside his head, with big, glassy eyes – she doesn’t think she’d be able to read her own handwriting.

“Do you regret it?” she asks, all too quiet. “Do you regret enlisting?” 

“Hm.” Frank’s head jerks up, so that he’s looking down his nose at her. Karen should be more bothered, by the arrogance of it. The corners of his eyes tighten and the hollowed out expression is gone. “Well. Band’s called Leatherneck, so.” He shrugs, head bobbing forward as his shoulders roll, pursing his lips and making a quiet smacking noise when he does.

Karen looks down then. Her hair slips from behind her ear and she chews the inside of her cheek, eyes glancing over her notes. Right. He’s still an asshole. She nods, once, tucking her hair back behind her ear. _Get it together, Page._ Karen takes a deep breath, squaring her shoulders.

When she looks up, the wiseass quirk to the corner of his mouth gives way to something more contemplative. 

“Truth is, ma’am,” Frank says, rubbing his index finger against his knuckle. “I loved being a marine. I loved that shit.” 

His words give Karen pause. She tries to wrestle with that. That this man across from her loved being a marine. He got shot in the head being a marine, but when he says _I loved being a marine_ , it comes out, _I_ loved _being a marine_. There’s a fervor in Frank’s voice, one Karen can’t shake out, can’t wrap her head around.

“What did you love about it?” She asks. Her voice is quiet, but full of determined curiosity. It folds her brow, her concentration on Frank writing itself across her face.

“Do you know what a Force Recon Marine is?” Frank asks, rocking forward, then back. His spine straightens. The fingers of his left hand perch on the lip of his mug, steam curling around his contused knuckles.

Karen shakes her head. “No.”

“Well, you’re looking at one,” Castle says, matter of fact. His voice goes husky with - _pride_. Not the angry, oddly anxious kind he’d worn when he talked about kicking Nazis out of shows. This is different. There’s a rich, even timbre to his voice. “We know how to do the job.”

She wants to let his words slide, accept them for what they are. She doesn’t want to pull the thread of Frank Castle’s memory of combat. It’s a powerful, gut feeling. But in her head she hears her Investigative Reporting 441 professor, barking, _Don’t trust your gut. Your gut’s stupid and emotional. It’ll make you miss things. You need facts. Then you can listen to your gut all you want._

“And what, exactly, is your job?” she asks, muscle tightening in her jaw. 

Frank’s index finger stops tracing the brim of his mug. “Our objective is to stop the enemy,” he says, quiet but forceful. His hushed voice only heightens the severity of his words, fixing Karen to the booth.

She realizes, suddenly more aware of her body than she’s been all afternoon, that she’s painted herself into a corner across from Frank Castle.

“We conducted covert movements, rapid, independent, running one of two operations: black ops,” - this Frank says with a tone bordering on casual, and Karen’s not sure if she’s supposed to assume that means he trusts her to know what _black ops_ means. (She does. She’s not an idiot.) - “or green. Deep reconnaissance. Which means, sometimes, a Force Recon battalion gets farmed out to the CIA.” He glances out the window as sunshine glints off the hood of a passing car, crossing his busted face. His pupils constrict, briefly, in the light. “Force goes where the rest of the Corps won’t. To ensure the success of the Corps’ operations in-country.”

Karen nods slowly. When she looks at Frank, her imagination tucks him into dark camouflage. She feels a chill down her spine and doesn’t look at his hands, where she trusts her stupid, stupid brain to insert a gun. 

She meets his eyes, then. They’re shaded by a baseball cap and a storm of bruises. Focusing on those gradations of color, Karen asks, “And that’s what you loved?”

Frank stares at her a beat. Exhales. Continues, “We worked in teams. Small. Maneuverable. Read somethin’ somewhere, said Mattis used to call us cocky, obnoxious bastards.” Something wrenches in Castle’s expression - bitterness, countered with something else that Karen can’t quite place. 

Then he raises his eyebrows, shrugs, snorts softly. “Shit, we were,” he concedes, simple.

His tone is _fond_ , Karen realizes. 

“And I _loved it._ ” This is rougher, impassioned. A muscle loosens in his jaw when he says it, mouth opening a little too wide. His right hand, resting on the table, begins to tap furiously. “Working my team, Key Hole and Sting Ray - loved it when I didn’t have command, loved it more when I did, yeah? ‘Cause I was good at it.”

Karen realizes, in her study of his hands, his knuckles read _PUNISHER_. She looks back up at his face. Frank’s expression’s calcified in the handful of seconds Karen had looked away, the hard line of his mouth back in place, the sharpness in his eyes.

“But Iraq was the stupidest most dickless bullshit of my goddamn _life_.” Frank’s voice is low, and _angry_. Everything about the way he moves is quiet. His hands alternate between deliberate stillness and isolated, insistent fidgeting which, by now, Karen figures can’t be something over which Frank has much control to speak of. His head tilts to talk to her, but his chest and shoulders remain still, posture impeccable. Karen resists the urge to straighten in her seat.

“Putting goddamn First Recon in broken down piece of shit humvees, drawing up orders to do shit we ain’t trained to do. Fuckin’ half-cocked retard shit, when those maggots had goddamn Lightly Armored Reconnaissance ready to fuckin’ go. Turned us into First Suicide Battalion.”

Frank takes a deep, rattling breath. Karen hears, then, the light wheeze in his lungs. She also catalogues the asymmetrical jut to his nose and wonders how many times it’s been broken. She doesn’t ask.

“That sure as shit wasn’t what I joined up for,” Frank says, shaking his head once, a fraction of an inch. He sighs and leans back, posture sagging. It’d seem relaxed, if he didn’t look so weary. His hands curl tight around his coffee. “You wanna know where the songs come from? Find Mattis. Visit that prick at his goddamn day job and ask _him_ for an interview.”

Karen takes a deep breath. She’d been matching her breathing to Frank’s haggard rhythm without realizing, only noticing now that he’s calmed down.

Mattis. That’s something to know. She adds it to the rolodex in her head, cross-references with what information she has about the war in Iraq - she’d been just six years old, when the Towers fell.

Gears stall and start up again, doubletime, in Karen’s mind, hearing all of this. That the United States Marine Corps deliberately overstepped a group of troops well-suited to a mission only to scrub in a separate force. And to give them - according to Frank - shoddy enough equipment that it precipitated him being _shot in the head_ by a fellow marine. 

Karen shakes with the information, chewing her lip for a beat before returning Frank’s gaze. “Maybe I will,” she says, low. 

Frank blinks, and gives Karen a quiet once-over that looks like he knows she means it.

There’s a suspended moment in which they simply look at each other, mugs in hand. The ambient sounds of the diner pile back into Karen’s awareness, like the volume had been turned down, before. There are more patrons now than there’d been when Frank had first sat down, a modest lunch rush closing the distance between Frank, Karen, and everyone else. 

By the time the waitress comes by and refreshes their coffees, the edge has gone out of Frank’s shoulders, and Karen switches gears.

“You’ve never moved on from Marvel records, even after ten years,” she says. She can do this. Can lay the bread crumbs out for him. “Even when other bands on the label have gone on to bigger and better. Why?”

He _tsks_ and shakes his head. Karen clenches her teeth. But when Frank turns to the side, the corner of his mouth is turned up, just so, the curve of a half-smile mirroring the shape of the bruise on his temple that’s only partly concealed under his baseball cap.

“Because there ain’t no better,” he says, definitive. “You mean more money, when you say that. But that’s not why we do this. Sure as shit isn’t why Rogers does it, either.”

“So it’s a principle thing,” Karen offers.

Frank’s brow bunches in thought. Deep lines appear in his face when he does this. Karen’s struck, again, with the urge - _compulsion_ \- to draw him; to document the positive and negative spaces of his features.

Still, there’s something upturned about the expression.

“Maybe,” he says, noncommittal and dry as a bone. “A bit, yeah.”

“The other bit then,” Karen says, involuntarily leaning a bare inch forward. Her eyes narrow, because she’s got something, she thinks. “Is it that Steve Rogers served in combat too?”

The deep furrow in Frank’s brow jumps. He snickers, then, the edge of his mouth flashing up. It makes his cheeks crinkle. He swipes a closed fist through the air, a rallying gesture, and chuckles. “Oh yeah,” he breathes, “Semper Fi an’ all.”

He’s making fun of her.

Karen responds with a minute shake of her head and reaches for her coffee. Before putting it to her lips, however, she mutters, “Dick.” 

Frank chuckles again. The wheeze is there, too. It’s good to have that recorded, Karen thinks. Frank watches, waits for her to set her coffee back down before speaking. “You got any more questions, ace?”

“Some,” she says, quiet. Karen allows herself to look at her list. She hasn’t asked half of the ones she’d written down. Looking at them now, her recorder reading thirty-five minutes and counting, she realizes Frank wasn’t ever going to answer a question like, _Leatherneck has a die hard fanbase - the band has been around for nearly a decade, but you have hardly any internet presence. What’s the reasoning behind that? Do you think that social media is the heart of all evil, like some artists?_  

Of course there are more, that she still hasn’t asked. Some of them stalk through her head like wolves. Hungry.

Frank’s eyes are trained on her in the silence. His face is unreadable - an expression in a language Karen doesn’t speak. She can see the cogs of thought rotating behind his eyes, but can’t guess what exactly they’re processing. Probably that she’s been quiet for too long.

When their eyes meet again, Frank doesn’t blink and Karen feels, for the span of a second, panic blossom in her chest. She drags in a breath, desperate to pop this sudden bout of anxiety brought on by his indecipherable expression, by the onslaught of questions she has in her head, by the drive she feels to keep this interview going, to keep pushing him.

Karen decides to ignore the feeling and busies herself with flipping to a new page in her notebook. “Uhm,” she starts, blinking; trying to clear her head so she can form the question. “You’re –” she swallows. “You’re not the only member of Leatherneck who served, is that correct?”

She catches him with the question while he’s taking a drink from his coffee. Castle’s brow furrows, his mouth turning down. “The hell’s that got to do with anything?” he asks, incredulous as he lowers the mug, which looks comically small in his hands. 

Karen swallows. “Just trying to be thorough,” she insists, quiet. She’s got one hand poised, ready to write. The other nervously splayed against her own mug. She shakes her head when she speaks and it knocks her hair loose, falling back into her eyes.

While she reaches up to tuck it back behind her ear, her gaze tracks from his hands up to the faded bruise on his jaw. “Listen,” she starts, eyes tilting up the last few inches to meet Frank’s, “you wanted me to interview you. We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t, right?”

She waits for Frank’s nod. It’s miniscule, a gentle incline of his head paired with an expression that she _thinks_ is him trying to figure out her point. So she makes it:  

“Then let me do my job, okay?” 

Frank’s eyes roam for a minute, moving as erratically as his fingers on his coffee mug. He’s searching her face and Karen forces herself to sit tight. When she reaches deep for the strength to sit under his scrutiny, she finds the anxiety sitting on her diaphragm. But underneath that is something else. The stubborn ounces that she knows got her here. She holds onto that.

“Me an’ Rachel served in the Corps,” Frank finally answers, quiet. His expression infinitesimally softer. His eyes are also wider, and he doesn’t quite make eye contact with her, focus landing high on her cheekbone instead. He’s brought his hands together again, elbows on the tabletop, middle and forefinger of one hand rubbing against the knuckles of the other. 

Now that Karen’s across from him, _talking_ with him, she’s surprised at how expressive he is. How easily he swings from irate, to mocking, to honest. How his feelings write themselves across his face. They’re subtle expressions, sure, but there’s an impossible starkness to his blunt features that make his microexpressions turn macro. 

“Did you serve together?” Karen asks, curious about his sudden quieting. When she looks up from her notes, she tightens her grip on her pen ‘till it hurts in an attempt to keep from sketching. That would be unprofessional.

Frank shakes his head. “Different units.” There’s a pause before he adds, that odd bitter fondness inching back into his tone, “Only ‘bout one percent of Marines make it to Force Recon.”

Karen resists the urge to whistle. The urge scares her – her dad was a professor of American labor history, who’d raised Karen and her brother on a steady diet of Pete Seeger and watered-down Youth International Party politics – she wasn’t raised to support the wars in the Middle East.

But, she thinks, meeting Frank’s eyes, maybe he doesn’t really, either. She wants to ask. She won’t. (Not yet.)

She forges forward, glancing back at her notes, “And your drummer –”

“Shit, listen,” Frank says, shaking his head again. Karen tries to ignore the tightness in her stomach when he interrupts her, anxiety icing over her guts. “If you’re just gonna ask me about the band, we practice at The Safehouse ‘round four-thirty. Get your answers then.”

Karen’s pulse stutters and pounds in her chest. It’s a jerk-and-snap feeling she associates with defibrillator paddles, a dark and empty pause before a swift slam. Only this time it’s _her_ heart, gathering electricity from the air, starting with a jolt.

Suddenly, this – whatever story is shaping here, in the space between Frank’s words and Karen’s questions – is bursting from the bonds of a column pitch. A band that’s never done press, the only photos of them online (outside of a handful of indistinct Instagram posts) some blurry black and white shots dated from 2010. And Karen’s just been told to come by their practice, to ask her questions.

“I –” she starts, but snaps her mouth shut when she realizes a _thank you_ will only prompt a scoff. She exhales the breath meant for her gratitude and rubs the back of her neck with one hand, feeling her skin heat under her palm. She makes herself return Frank’s gaze. “Okay,” she says, quiet. “I’ll be there.”

During the following lull in their conversation, the bell on the diner’s door jingles, bright. It tears Karen’s attention from Frank, and she watches a family come in through the front door. They take the booth beside theirs, behind Frank.

There's a little boy with them, with dark skin and wild hair. He’s four, maybe five, and his hands are held by two women who smile at the harried waitress when they stop at the _Please Wait to be Seated_ sign. Almost as soon as the family’s sat down, the boy keeps turning in his seat, peering over the divider between the booths, embodying a four-maybe-five-year-old’s concept of personal space.

The boy pulls a face at Karen and she laughs, light. She beams at him – the kind of bright, slightly silly smile kind adults offer curious children. He turns his warm-cheeked face to Frank and regards him with wide, dark eyes.

Frank’s shoulders tighten before he turns and looks at the boy. There’s a blank moment, before Frank smiles too. It’s genuine, but faintly troubled. Karen watches, transfixed, reading the discomfort in Frank’s face with sudden clarity.

“Hey, little man,” Frank says, at once warm and somewhat distant. The kid grips the material of the booth in two small brown hands and says _hello_ back, stretching out the ‘oh’ sound, almost sing-song.

The boy’s mothers rein him in, then, and he turns away, stops pulling faces. Frank is frowning thoughtfully into his coffee. Again, Karen’s taken aback by just how much Frank communicates with his body. She wonders if he’s aware of it. It’s then that Karen asks, acutely conscious of the change in Frank’s demeanor, “Was music always the plan?”

Frank’s head jerks half an inch, lifting from his coffee. “Mm?” It comes out of Frank like a grunt. He blinks at her, coming back from wherever he’s been the past ten seconds. 

“Did you always mean to start a band?” she clarifies. It’s a softball question, one off her original list. She hopes to draw him back out.  

He grunts again, noncommittal. “Eh, maybe.” A slight lift to his shoulders. Karen’s pen moves across the page of her notebook as he continues, “Music was...important, from before. Always had a guitar on deployment. But there wasn’t much planning involved.”

Karen’s curiosity piques. He plays the guitar, but not in this band. It’s an interesting choice – one she doesn’t quite understand, from what little she’s learned about musicians at _AltPress,_ so she asks, pen paused and eyebrows raised in interest, “You play the guitar?”

Frank finishes his coffee and signals the waitress for a refill - all without breaking eye contact with Karen - and answers, “Not anymore.” His voice is a closed door. Karen decides it’s best to walk past it.

“So, music was always important,” she echoes, altogether too interested, “Why? Were your parents musical?”

He snorts, a slight edge to it. There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it quirk to his head when he does. “Nah. My mom loved her some Pavarotti, but.” A pause. Dry as hell, the corner of his mouth turned up into a barely-there smirk, he finishes, “That ain’t really my speed.”

Karen huffs a laugh, continues, “Then, where did punk come in?”

The way Frank’s face twists before shutting down makes Karen a little dizzy. She feels spun, like she’s being led in a blindfolded dance. She combs over the past fifteen seconds for a clue as to what she said wrong. His mom was fair game. The guitar wasn’t – did that have something to do with it? 

There’s a long pause; Frank flicking his fingertip against the tabletop, Karen worrying. When it’s apparent that he’s not going to answer, Karen clears her throat, tries something else, “Is your family supportive?” Asking about his mother had gotten a note of humor out of him. “Of Leatherneck, I mean.” Karen’s cheeks heat.

Frank exhales heavily through his parted lips, face smoothing out slightly, to buffed stone. His shoulders are no less tense. “My folks passed, long time ago.” A stiff shrug as he adds, “An’ I’m an only child, so.”

Karen worries the inside of her lip. “I’m sorry,” she says, pentip resting on her notebook. With a nasty, sick swoop in her stomach, she realizes a beat too late that she doesn’t know if she’s apologizing for his loss or for his being an only child. She pushes her hair behind her ear again. “I know it doesn’t mean much, when you’ve lost someone.” Karen doesn’t meet Frank’s eyes. Doesn’t even look at his face. Can’t bring herself to.

She hasn’t spoken with her own parents in a while. They’re good people. Loving, decent. And making conversation with them for more than ten minutes at a time somehow manages to put a knot into the open maw of guilt and grief in Karen’s middle the size of her fist. 

But they’re _alive_ , and she _loves_ them, and it makes something queasy swirl in Karen’s stomach, realizing that she, of all people, asked Frank about family without considering the possibility that that could be a tough question. Her breathing is coming too fast. She needs to fix it, control it, because Frank’s across from her and shutting down, apparently, because of _her_ and –

And yet.

Frank’s somehow there with her, ducking his head to meet her eyes. His expression is – soothing, in the hyper-second where Karen first locks gazes with him. Big brown eyes. Easy set to his mouth.

And when she looks up properly, reeling herself in, he seems just fine. Everything back in order. Karen takes another deep breath, anchoring herself in the middle of this conversation that keeps making her lose her footing.

“My mom’s name was Louisa,” Frank says, then, matter-of-fact. Karen turns that over in her head, that Frank has just told her that without her asking. It seems like a gift, in the wider context of their interaction. There’s a note of sweetness to it. Like, for what it’s worth, he wanted Karen to know: his mother’s name was Louisa.

Karen blinks. “And she loved Pavarotti.”

“And she _loved_ Pavarotti.”

Karen offers him a small smile, deeply grateful for reasons she doesn’t dare name, and forges forward with caution. “And your dad?”

“Mario. Yeah. Didn’t give a shit about Pavarotti,” he says. A pause. “Loved my mom, though.” His voice is deep, a familiar rumble to it; but gentler than before, too. Frank takes a long drink of coffee before setting it back down. Karen’s lost count, of how many mugs he’s downed. Doesn’t seem healthy, she decides, before swallowing a harsh laugh, directed at herself.

 _Yeah,_ she thinks. _If Frank just cut back on the caffeine he’d probably be a pretty chill dude. Sharp insight, Ms. Page._

“So the lead singer of Leatherneck was raised on opera?” Karen allows herself to smirk, slightly, tilting her head at him, and Frank _laughs_. It’s not loud, doesn’t last long. But it shows his teeth, and Karen feels a tendril of pride loop through the highest part of her chest, just below her throat.

“Yeah, sure. Make a good hook, right?” He tilts his head too, and they both reach for their coffee. The mirror effect is obvious enough that Karen’s face heats, and Frank looks out the window, suddenly very interested in a passing taxi.

“My parents, uh… really like folk music?” The sentence turns up into a question when she realizes she’s speaking. She doesn’t know why she said that. But it gets Frank’s attention, pulling his gaze from the window. A curious rumple appears in his heavy brow. 

So Karen continues, the ache in her chest countered by the compulsion she feels to offer Frank the same kindness he’d offered to her. “Yeah,” she breathes, nodding slightly. “Uhm. We used to, uh, go on these family vacations, drive…” she gestures, loosely, unable to finish the sentence because she thinks about how her brother somehow _always_ needed to go to the bathroom, _all the time_. How she’d hated it.

“Uh. And my dad – he’d put on this Pete Seeger cassette.” She exhales. It’s almost a laugh, at the memory of her dad in the passenger seat, leading them along with the tape, banjolele – a joke gift from her mom, one year, that he’d then decided to learn how to play out of spite – perched in his hands. She shakes her head, touching her fingers to her temple. “I think we knew _The Little Red Songbook_ before we knew _Mary had a little lamb_.”

“Yeah? My old man, he was a longshoreman,” Frank offers. There’s a chuckle buried in his words as he continues, the corner of his mouth sloping upward, “You wouldn’t have known it, if you met him, but shit, he’d go on about the local for hours once he got started.”

Karen laughs despite herself, soft, breathy and spurred on by Frank’s own easy banter. “Really?” she asks.

Frank nods as he takes another sip from his coffee. “Oh yeah,” he says, his gentle rocking punctuated by a shrug. “We, ah, covered ‘My Daddy Was a Miner’, few years back. For some comp, raising money for folks’ hospital bills after Occupy. Did it as ‘My Daddy Was a Shoreman.’”

Karen hums, makes a note to try and dig up the compilation CD. “Would he be proud, then?” she asks – the question is quiet, a slip of her tongue.

But instead of replying with a hard stare, Frank’s eyes narrow in silent laughter. He shakes his head and Karen catches the crinkle of _dimples_ in his sly grin. She exhales a little too fast, eyebrows bent up in surprise just as Frank says, “Shit no. My old man…” He trails off, for a beat, but doesn’t fall too deep into whatever memory Karen’s just called up in his mind. “He an’ I weren’t close. He was practically geriatric when I was born. Didn’t understand each other. He’d think I’ve become a real derelict.”

Huh. Karen nods, slow. She doesn’t have a response to this, to Frank talking about his parents – they’ve veered so far off course that Karen can’t even see the road anymore. She’s driving blind. She’s got pages and pages of notes, but no idea how to fit these pieces together. Or where to get the glue to make them stick.

Frank picks up on her hesitation. Of course he does. It’s goddamn uncanny. “You, uh, didn’t expect that, huh?” he says. His heavy brow shows deep lines of curiosity, concentration.

Karen sucks in a breath, her lips curling over her teeth. She doesn’t want to lie. Feels like she can’t. So she shakes her head, tongue whetting her own lips before she takes a sip of her coffee, churning over a reply, another question, anything.

“You, uh,” she starts as she lowers her cup, mirroring Frank’s words. “You got any other surprises for me, or do you want to leave some for me to dig up later tonight?”

Frank stills, the crease between his eyebrows unwavering. He hums as his eyes track over her face, and Karen finds that she’s smirking, just a little. There’s still a begrudging humor folded into his brow when he glances down, raising his coffee. He sucks his teeth after he drinks, a short, final sound, accentuated by the slide of ceramic against the tabletop when he sets down the empty mug.

“Guess we’ll see.”

 

* * *

 

Karen realizes, when she’s back at the office and pulling her camera from her bag, that she didn’t take any photos and feels a bit stupid for it. (A lot stupid.)

But still, she’ll have her chance at Leatherneck’s practice.  

In a little over two hours.

Holy shit. _Shit_. That’s terrifying, now that she’s alone in the office – Trish took a late lunch, to man the phone for Karen while she went out to meet with Frank. Her boss might deserve something nice, like a bottle of wine or something, for being so accommodating of her freelancing. She knows, from checking her Facebook feed, that she’s luckier than a fair number of her former classmates.

But right now? She doesn’t feel lucky at all. Right now she feels like she might’ve bitten off more than she can chew. Because she’s going to a band practice, to continue an interview with a full _band_. She’s never _done_ this before. Shit, fuck. She covered fucking. Local police reports. And campus politics.

“What the fuck am I _doing_?” she mutters under her breath, putting her hand to her forehead, as she watches her voice recorder convert the audio from the diner to an mp3 file. The status bar crawls, moves a millimeter and then another before jumping back three millimeters. Karen’s knee bounces, knocking against the underside of her desk. She swallows a dry lump in her throat and her fingertips tap against her temple. 

Her iMessage announces a text from Foggy Nelson, who’d gotten her number from Trish, apparently. He asks if she’s doing well. Karen huffs a thin laugh at her screen.

 

* * *

 

Frank steps heavily into the middle of the low stage at The Safehouse. His eyes trail over Rachel tuning her guitar (slight crease in her brow, shock of red hair falling into her eyes where she’s bent over the neck). Kathy is crouched down next to her, scraped knees jutting out from under her short skirt as she plugs in her bass. Standing, she scuffs the toe of her left boot against the stage and plays a quick funk riff, saying something to Micro that Frank doesn’t catch. It draws a soft laugh out of Micro, planted behind their set. Intermittent drum beats sound throughout the space, interspersed with Micro tightening tension rods and answering whatever shit Kathy’s talking by throwing spare sticks at her when she’s not looking.

“Hey,” he starts. Rachel mutes her strings and looks up at Frank immediately. Micro glances his direction, before refocusing on their kit. Kathy is frowning at three drumsticks clutched in her right hand, muttering.  

“There’s someone comin’ to practice, today,” he says.

That gets everybody’s attention. His fingers jump at his sides, tap-tap-tapping against the leg of his jeans. Frank rolls from the balls of his feet to his heels unconsciously, glancing between the three of them, eyes landing on Rachel more often than not. Her stare is the least expressive, but he knows her well enough to catch the microscopic fold in her mouth. She won’t say anything, that he’s sure of. He raises his chin a little.

“A… reporter,” he continues, jaw working. A reporter. He’s entirely too aware of how it sounds. Waits a beat for Micro’s stupid reply he knows is coming – _What did you do with our Frank Castle? Give him back._

Instead, when Frank’s gaze lands on Micro, they’re smiling, faintly. Huh. Frank looks back to the girls, continues, “Caught up with me at work, few days back. Asked for an interview.”

That draws the response Frank’s been preparing for since he’d started walking towards The Safehouse. Kathy snorts, incredulous. Rachel’s gaze is steady. Frank clears his throat and continues, “She had some questions weren’t mine to answer.”

There’s a beat of quiet, in which Frank meets Rachel and Kathy’s blank stares, trying to ignore the overly casual way Micro arranges their stick bag at their feet before settling back on the stool.

Frank remembers, suddenly, Micro telling them about an interview request over dinner one night – Rachel working on Kathy’s seemingly never-ending Celtic-inspired sleeve at Micro’s dining table while Micro and Frank ate takeout leftovers, sitting on the kitchen counter.

‘Course Micro’s smiling like the cat that got the fucking canary. They know exactly who Karen Page is. The prick.

“You fucking what?” Kathy asks, finally, tugging Frank out of his thoughts.

He shrugs. “Ran into her at work a few months ago, guess she got curious.” It had taken him a beat to place her, when she’d returned to The Chaste full of piss and vinegar, stamping her foot and demanding an interview. She’d been the photographer at The Defenders’ show. The one in heels – which he’d noticed she was wearing again, because she apparently doesn’t have a lick of sense – the one who’d snarled at him when he’d asked if she was alright.

Which, is – fine. He knows how he looks. How he comes off. Likes it that way. His thumb pushes at the _N_ inked into his right middle finger.

“And what, you didn’t tell her curiosity got the fucking cat killed?” Kathy asks. Her mouth, naturally pouty, turns even further down in confusion. Her narrow brows pinch. “You get fucking shot in the head again? She shoot you? I’ll kill her.”

Frank huffs, rolling his eyes in reply. “Christ’s sake…” he mutters. “I got this, yeah? Micro told us about the email –”

Kathy interrupts, “‘Cause that shit’s mattered so much in the past –”

Just as Micro, lifting both hands, shouts, “Switzerland!”

Rachel plays a chord progression then, loud, drowning out their voices. Her face is impassive as ever, flyaway red hairs curling around her cheeks. Her eyes are the impenetrable color of steel. When everyone shuts up, she says, “If your reporter steps out of line, that’s it.” She toes one of her pedals. “Everyone cool with that? We’ve got actual shit to do today.”

Frank nods, stooping down to reach for the microphone that’s sitting on top of a tangled nest of cords. He busies himself with unknotting them. 

Kathy’s pout lingers for a beat, severe and coupled with her muttering, “Fine. Whatever. Her funeral.”

 

* * *

 

He hears her before he sees her. The slam of the side door. Click of heels, in the spaces between Micro’s drum beats as they tease out what a slowed roll might sound like. Everyone’s on edge, not quite willing to start practicing in earnest until they’ve set their eyes on Karen.

Frank doesn’t blame them, but Kathy’s nerves are like a goddamn feedback loop, running up everyone’s spines. 

Still, when he looks up at the sound of her approach, his breathing slows. The hand he’s got wrapped around the mic stand taps. Karen’s hair bounces when she walks; she’s still wearing that pink blouse, lightweight sweater, the skirt. Looking like a lost thing, with her big, big blue eyes.

But counter to her eyes, her mouth is set, a determined quirk to the bow of her lips. Her gaze, though wide, moves steadily from Frank to Rachel at his right and Kathy at his left, Micro behind them all. She doesn’t speak, slowing about two yards from the stage. 

“Hey,” Frank says, low.

He’s about to swing off the stage to grab her a chair or something, when Kathy says, brusque as ever, “You the reporter then?”

Karen nods, hand reaching up to push back her hair – it’s a movement Frank figures is unconscious, a tell of hers. But she swallows whatever anxiety accompanies the motion and continues to walk forward, faster now. “Yeah,” she says to Kathy. Her voice is soft, just like it was in the diner. “Karen Page. I’m writing for Noisey.” She reaches the stage and extends her hand.

Kathy stares at it. “Vice looking for another angle to line Gavin Mc-Fucking-Innes’ Proud Boy pockets with the work of _actual_ anti-fascists?” She’s quick to throw that barb together. Frank’s eyes flick over to Micro, briefly. 

They’re both watching Karen for her reaction.

Her mouth tightens. Karen rolls her eyes. “Oh come on,” she says, half-laughing. There’s a mean edge to it. Her eyes flash a darker shade of blue. “You know he left like 10 years ago and has since spent every moment he can scrape out of the spotlight to complain about the direction Vice has taken.” 

Karen re-adjusts her bag on her shoulder. “And besides, Vice isn’t signing my paychecks,” she says. “I’m freelancing this piece because I think _someone_ should actually tell your story.”

“‘Our story’?” That’s Rachel, forearms braced against her Gibson’s body and neck. She arches one eyebrow with the measured coolness that comes with officer’s bars. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Karen breathes. There’s an edge of upset to her voice, a flush rising in her cheeks, eyes narrowing at the corner. Frank recognizes the look. Her knee’s bent, just slightly – like she’s trying to keep from stamping her foot. “Considering the direction the government’s moving. And under _this_ administration? More people than ever are going to come looking for bands like yours. It took me a few hours to find your service records. Do you really want people to come to their own conclusions about you?”

Her words hit a wall of silence. One that makes Frank duck his head, impressed, and maybe a bit fucking smug. It’s the same breed of disarming, furious resolve she’d turned on him, transitioning from _Leatherneck is known for being very anti-establishment, critical of the government_ , directly into, _how much of that stems from the fact that you were shot in the head by another Marine while in Iraq?_

Page did her goddamn research. As a general fan of solid intel and logistics, Frank has to give her that. He offers Rachel a subtle shrug when her eyes land on him.

“So,” Karen says, raising her eyebrows, “are we good?”

Rachel hums. It’s a quiet sound, mostly communicated through the softening in the line of her mouth. She doesn’t break eye contact with Karen. Instead, Page breaks first, covering by turning her attention back on Frank.

He nods and lets go of the mic. “I’ll get you a chair,” he says, gruff, swinging down off the low stage. Karen mumbles a thank you as he walks past, towards the makeshift green room Dave and Quentin constructed out of shoddy drywall and several heavy canvas drop cloths, strung up like curtains. Inside the green room’s a threadbare couch and some cases of water - either scavenged from Dave’s latest dumpster dive or quietly delivered by Joan, a tenant from an apartment building a few blocks over (a woman so small and timid it’s earned her the nickname “Mouse” and who, over the last few years, has somehow become The Safehouse’s unofficial den mother). The green room’s far wall is also covered in a string of silvery tinsel that someone (Dave, most likely) had strung up in an attempt to decorate.

Frank, however, makes a beeline for the small collection of battered metal folding chairs they have stashed back there. They’re usually brought out for workshops or group meetings The Safehouse hosts. Today he’s dragging one out for Karen to sit in while she watches their practice and peppers them with questions.

Questions Frank expects will both impress and annoy Kathy. Any judgement Rachel passes on Karen she’ll keep to herself. Micro’s the most personable of them all, and judging from their sly grin at Karen’s arrival, they’ve already decided based on whatever dirt they dug up online that they like her.

When he walks out of the green room, dragging a chair along, Kathy’s leaning against an amp that’s nearly as tall as she is. Her brightly colored sleeve tattoo flexes in the afternoon light that streams in through the handful of high, exposed industrial windows. She cracks her gum loudly. “So,” she starts, eyes flashing on Frank, over Karen’s shoulder. Her grin is wicked. “What’s the feature you’re writin’ on our Frankie Boy there, Legs?”

Frank doesn’t see Karen’s face, but he definitely notices the beat of silence while Karen processes her new nickname. Her head bows, hair falling forward so she can push it back. Another nervous tic he’d picked up on at the diner, something she does when she needs a second to collect herself.

“Uhm,” she breathes, and Kathy’s grin spreads. But the space between Karen’s modifier and her reply is too brief for Kathy to jump in. “It’s for a column, actually.” 

Micro looks up from where they’re pretending to adjust the tension on their hihats. “Oh, cool! What column?” The smile they afford Karen is bright, a balm for Kathy’s acrimony.

If Frank slows enough to give Karen a chance to reply before he reaches her, it’s pure coincidence.

Again, he watches Karen’s hand card through her strawberry blonde waves. “Uh, it’s for _First Dates_?” Her voice is pained. Frank slows further, almost comes to a halt. He still can’t see her face, but he does see the tips of her ears – a deep pink, not much lighter than the shade of her blouse.

Huh.

Awkward sensation in his gut at hearing she’s writing about him for something called _First Dates_ notwithstanding, Frank wouldn’t trade places with Karen right now for anything.

Micro’s very obviously biting their tongue, round cheeks puffed with suppressed laughter. Rachel’s eyebrows crawl so far up her forehead they disappear into the shorter, loose layers of her hair.

Frank looks back at Kathy just as she lets out a cackle that borders on _violent_ , and thinks, _ah, fuck._

“Well shit, Legs,” she says, grin cutting, “Frankie’s an easier lay than that. All you gotta do is ask.”

Frank presses his lips into a straight line, narrows his eyes at Kathy. Karen’s eyes are on Kathy too, still, mouth opening and closing - she doesn’t notice Frank’s approach until he’s directly beside her. From Kathy’s expression, Frank thinks she’s pretty confident she’s just broken Page.

He turns, studies Karen. Her face is fever-bright, a shade of pink that nudges at a memory, nestled far away: Seaside. The smell of boardwalk fries, oily on his fingers, never crisp. Dissonant squawking of seagulls. The minimal shade offered by ducking his head into the backseat of his ‘78 Mustang, towel spread out on the cracked leather, for her. Frank’s hands, carefully brushing aside feather-soft brown hair. Pulling a teal bathing suit strap up and off her shoulder, slow. Her sunburned skin giving off its own heat.

Frank blinks. Rubs the fingers of his free hand together, clean. No fry oil. Karen Page’s flushed face beside him. Blonde eyebrows pinched together as she huffs. There’s a flyaway hair stuck to the corner of her mouth. He cannot hear seagulls.

“Here,” Frank grunts, offering Karen the chair. He’s not bailing her out, but he is giving her the minute he thinks she needs.

She startles a bit, to find him next to her. “Oh!” she says, breathless. “Shit, I forgot you were –” she swallows, stopping that thought in its tracks, and meets his gaze. Her expression is leveling out, eyes less wide. “Thanks,” Karen finishes.

Frank nods, frowns a little. Her voice sounds - chastened. Then Karen ducks her head, busying herself with arranging her things, and Frank throws Kathy a long-suffering look that’s one third resignation and two thirds _fuck off_. Kathy waggles her eyebrows in reply, and Frank can’t help but scoff, lightly, sound buried in his throat.

Karen sits, her hair falling between her and the rest of Leatherneck in a shimmering curtain as she reaches into her bag. She withdraws the notebook she’d had at lunch – black leather, the kind that flips up vertically, elastic band that keeps it closed straining at the fullness of it – and the recorder, too. No camera, he notes. He looks back at her bag, which is still full, sitting stiffly on the floor next to her feet. It’s probably in there. She didn’t take photos at lunch, Frank realizes, fingers of his right hand curling and uncurling against his thigh. 

When Karen looks back up, shaking her hair out of her face by holding her chin high, she flips open her notebook with her eyes trained on Kathy, taps her pen to the page. “So you and Frank dated, then?”

Frank snorts, abrupt. Karen’s head jerks towards him a moment, but her eyes stay determinedly on Kathy, while Frank hoists himself back onstage. Rachel catches his eyes as he straightens, shoots him an _all clear?_ signal just as Kathy cackles, again. _Christ_.

“Frank don’t date. We fucked.” She shrugs, all too casual. “First n’ last man I ever had in my pussy.” Kathy weaves her fingers together and faces both palms out, stretching her arms and cracking her knuckles before she continues, “He ain’t bad in the sack, Legs, but at the end of the day I’m much happier without any men near my cunt. Considering how much I paid for it.”

At that, half of Frank’s mouth curls in a wry smile, returning Rachel’s _all clear_ with one hand. Trust Kathy to lay her cards on the table.

Karen nods carefully but doesn’t respond directly. Which, Frank thinks, is to her credit. It’s generally the best way to deal with Kathy’s bullshit.

“Well now that that’s all cleared up,” Karen says, sighing. She crosses her legs and perches her hands, notebook, and recorder on her knee. She looks over everyone onstage. “Do you all consent to me recording this?”

Kathy’s expression of mild disappointment at not entrapping Karen draws a high-pitched giggle out of Micro, who says, “Yeah, I think we’re good with that.”

 

* * *

 

The Safehouse is different in daylight, Karen decides when she walks up. First of all, the murals on the side of the brick seem more vibrant. They are done in a shock of color – pinks and purples and turquoises – and look significantly less imposing. Secondly, there’s no line of assorted punks at the door, being shuffled in by Spacker Dave and his junk drawer of facial piercings.

The front door swings open when she pushes on it. The lights are still low, though it’s brighter than when she was here last. There’s sunlight, streaming in through the handful of high, exposed windows in the space that opens up in the rear.

The metal chair Karen sits in is warped, bent a little at the back. It’s not painful, but keeps her sitting up as straight as possible. She’s almost thankful for it, because it keeps her posture tight and there’s a part of her that’s terrified, honestly.

She’s trying to maintain eye contact with Kathy, despite the urge Karen has to throw her shoe at her and tell her to shut the fuck up and let her do her job. But she’s a journalist. Her job is to observe and tell the truth. Not pick fights with combative subjects.

“Uh, feel free to start,” Karen says, when Leatherneck stares back at her in silence. “I’ll just observe for a bit.” That seems safe, right? Karen has no idea.

Frank, at least, nods. “Alright,” he says, clipped. His voice is still low, rough hewn. No less commanding for its quiet. Something in his demeanor hardens, and he shoots Micro a look, says simply, “Death’s Head.”

The differential is striking, Karen takes note. It’s clear just by watching how his bandmates move around him that they have a deep respect for Frank - the taciturn manner in which Rachel’s eyes shift to him, though a fraction of her focus remains on Karen. The way Kathy moves like she still has something to say, but keeps it to herself, pivoting, eyeing Frank for cues.

Micro is looking at him too, playfulness giving way to firm concentration, pushing their glasses up the bridge of their nose. The lenses are a translucent orange acetate, clashing spectacularly with the streaks of purple illuminated in their dark hair, when the sun catches their topknot. Stray curls spring out haphazardly. Karen can vaguely make out a tattoo on Micro’s head, but dark stubble is growing in on their undercut, blurring the design. They roll their shoulders and sit up straighter, pulling a pair of drumsticks from a bucket beside them. When they shift on their seat, Karen notices they’re wearing bright pink shorts and Converse so worn she can see the heel of their sock through holes in the canvas.

Micro’s sticks are at the ready. Rachel and Kathy’s hands are perched over their respective strings. But it’s down to Frank, to give the word.

They’re all so - _professional,_ in a way that Karen hadn’t quite expected. A pang of guilt shoots through her at the realization. She knows what it is to be underestimated. 

They’re starting with a song Karen hasn’t heard, she’s pretty sure. She recognizes the name, off their first EP _Tiny Ugly World_. Remembering now that she hadn’t listened to it while nosing around on their bandcamp page. But the album art flashes in her mind – a military truck, wheels spinning up dust.  

Karen’s attention hovers on Frank. His t-shirt is plain black, faded, the long sleeves pushed up his forearms. A thick scar marks the jut of his right radius, puts his forearm into sharp relief, light and dark. He’s since shed the baseball cap he’d worn at the diner, exposing his shaved head to The Safehouse’s late afternoon light. When he turns, there’s another thin, horizontal scar over his right ear, maybe four inches long. Her thoughts stumble, trying and failing to keep track of all the places Frank’s been marked. On the back of his head her eyes find yet another bruise. It’s amorphous, small, a brownish-purple stain on the right side of the lower hemisphere of his skull, no more than a few inches above his nape.

Then the light catches, and Karen can see: right next to the bruise - if that’s what the strange little mark even is - is a dip in his skin, deep enough for Karen to feel a momentary swoop of revulsion in her gut, and Frank’s voice in her head:

_“I don’t got the time to get on the radio and say, hey, asshole. ‘Cause in the time it’s taken me to pull my head out my ass, the bullet’s already through the window and cutting through my helmet.”_

Her mouth opens, forming around a silent word. Involuntary. When he faces back downstage, the afterimage of a scar left by a bullet with Frank’s name on it is fixed in Karen’s mind.

 _Death’s Head_ , she supposes. 

Frank goes utterly still for five long seconds, eyes on the stage beneath his feet. Karen’s gaze falls to his hands - they’re steady, bruised knuckles hanging at his sides. He’s not looking at any of them, yet Karen gets the impression that he’s acutely aware of their attention, letting the moment stretch. Then he exhales, deep, and nods. Just once.

Kathy grins. Her smile is _pointy_ , features almost elfin. Karen remembers her parents taking them to Shakespeare in the Park once, on the Circus Lawn at the Shelburne Museum in Burlington. Karen’s seen the look of berserker mischief that Kathy wears like a second skin only once before, when the actor playing Puck had rubbed love potion onto the eyes of unsuspecting mortals.

The memory is sharp, and she only realizes she’s lost in it when she hears the hum of Rachel’s guitar striking up. Her notes are dissonant, painful. She plays alone. Her head is bowed over her guitar, loose bun of red hair slipping forward. Karen leans forward to see her face, the folding chair scraping a bare centimeter across the floor when she does. Rachel’s eyes are closed. 

A slow _thump, thump_ begins. Karen initially thinks it’s Micro, but when she drags her eyes away from Rachel, she finds that it’s Frank, tilting the base of the mic stand back and dropping it forward, again and again. _Thump. Thump._

Kathy is next to join in, her bass notes loud enough for Karen to feel the vibration in her throat. She sustains the notes long enough that Karen almost can’t tell when one ends and another begins. She’s got her booted feet planted, stance wide. The low, humming sound of the bass plucks at the anxiety in Karen’s guts, encroaching aura of dread heightened by the strain of Rachel’s guitar and the slow heartbeat Frank creates with the mic stand.

Frank rocks forward and back with each drop and lift. His eyes, Karen notices, are unfocused. She charts the heavy rise and fall of his chest. And then, he’s speaking into the mic, low, swaying with it:

“ _There is a Great Beast loose in the world of men_.” 

And on the final drop, Rachel’s guitar and Kathy’s bass strike the same note. It’s a thunderclap, reverberating, Micro’s drums following. They crash into the song, and with it comes the explosion Karen remembers. Again, Leatherneck’s sound bears into her like an oncoming semi-truck.

The song is _loud_ , chaotic, even without the hurricane of bodies surrounding the band. 

Yet this Frank is different. The fury and intensity remain, but without the crowd to play off his energy, he’s stifled. The sole inhabitant of an anger that’s meant to be shared. He continues to rock violently against the microphone stand until the song ends, breaking down to the single components with which it began. 

“ _Shit_ ,” Kathy says into the silence, after. She leans forward, stretching her arms out over her bass and cracking her knuckles; dark, chin-length hair falling shaggily into her eyes as she grins. “I love playing that. Why don’t we do it anymore?” 

“Because,” Micro replies, smiling over to her. They stretch up, lifting their arms over their head as they speak, “Someone kept getting in trouble with venue staff for breaking mic stands.”

Karen follows the gesture of their gaze. Her eyes land on Frank, whose own eyes are closed, head bowed. The corner of his mouth twitches, as if it wants to turn up at Micro’s teasing, but can’t quite manage it. He’s breathing heavily, his shoulders moving a full inch with each inhale and exhale. 

That’s when she sees the glint of metal against Frank’s neck, a streak of late afternoon sun landing on a silver chain. His shirt, worn in the collar, sags with his curved posture. Karen tracks the flash of silver down, whatever hangs on the end of the chain pushing against the loose, faded material of his black t-shirt from the inside. Then he opens his eyes, bends down to adjust the mic cord, and there’s something else. Something barely visible in the dark gap that opens between Frank’s chest and the fabric of his shirt.

Either he’s got the kind of bruising on his sternum that should necessitate a trip to the ER, or he’s got a chest tattoo. Both strike Karen as distinctly _possible_ , given the company. She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, considering. 

“We ain’t got one of those?” Kathy asks. Her voice is as coarse as everything else about her, yanking Karen out of her thoughts. When Kathy swings her arms up, Karen catches the flash of her hip, pale skin exposed as she arches her back. Catlike. Her black and white striped shirt is an effortlessly cool combination of too-loose and too-small. When she swings her arms back down, her hands re-settle on her bass. “Coulda’ sworn we did.”

“Like I said,” Micro says simply, “ _someone_ keeps breaking them.”

Frank waves a hand towards Micro, dismissive in a way that reeks of fondness. Amusement warms his expression, a striking counterpoint to the harsh bruising across his face. “Go away from me,” he grumbles. Karen has to bite down on the inside of her cheek to keep a charmed smile from cracking across her face.

He straightens, then, drawing up to his full height. His voice is churlish when he asks, “You two just gonna fuck around all day?” 

Neither Kathy nor Micro appear bothered, however. Kathy’s reply is a shrug and a nod towards Micro, her fingers – long, angular in the knuckles – slipping into position on the neck of her bass. Karen watches some unspoken communication pass between Kathy and Micro. Within a minute, they’re rolling into the next song, playing the first bars twice over. On the third, Rachel’s guitar joins in, quickly followed by the barbarous squall of Frank’s voice. 

Karen makes note of it all: The broken microphone stands. The surly warmth that sneaks out of Frank. How looking at Micro is a storm of color, sensory overload, arresting Karen’s focus. The easy, unspoken way they all move around each other. How Frank and Rachel communicate with their eyes, able to seamlessly pick up a song after Micro and Kathy play two bars. Or how when one of Micro’s sticks goes flying out of their hand, Rachel is already picking another off the amp next to Kathy and tossing it to them.

If any part of Karen expected Leatherneck to hold back on account of it being a rehearsal rather than a performance, she stands corrected. Their intensity is impressive, and more than a little unsettling. Kathy prowls the stage with her bass, chewing up the small distance between Micro and Rachel with her combat boots. The vinyl sticker on the instrument’s body reads _THIS MACHINE KILLS,_ reflecting light that streams through the windows, bouncing off the metal industrial beams in the ceiling. The _BANG!_ On Micro’s kick drum stretches and recoils with each beat.

Their energy _exists_ , palpable. It hangs heavy around them all, enthralling and disturbing in equal measure. Anger buzzes around and between and through the music, clinging like a swarm of flies. Karen’s throat feels thick with it.

It’s most apparent in Frank, whose hands hold the mic so tight the skin of his knuckles goes white beneath his tattoos. There’s an aching, improbably desperate quality to his crying, “ _We need a plan, need a plan, need a plan_.” Karen tries to understand, tries to read the expression on his face. But his features – contorted, eyes wild – are impenetrable, a mask of frenzy. 

He repeats lyrics, over and over, a nightmare mantra. “ _Get a gun, get a gun, get a gun_ –” or, “ _We need a doctor, need a doctor, a fucking doctor_.” Karen’s memory helpfully supplies a vision of Frank, hands curled around a mug of coffee, saying _Relearn how to keep things in order, develop memory, right?_

Frank almost spins, yanking the mic from its stand. Karen’s eyes snag again on the cicatrix that blooms at the back of his head, matched in size to the knot that forms in Karen’s throat. She swallows. 

The wrath of Rachel’s guitar matches that of Frank’s voice. Karen forces her eyes away from Frank – who now crouches at the edge of the stage, _screaming_ _–_ to watch the way Rachel’s fingers slide down the neck of her Gibson. Her jaw is set; her playing is precise, technical, faster than Karen can keep up with.

Frank stands, then, one hand holding the microphone. The other is wrapped tight around whatever’s on the end of the chain Karen saw at his neck. He grabs for it through his shirt, tugging hard and high enough that Karen sees the waistband of his underwear (red) and something else on his skin (shades of blue and gold). A tattoo, spreading across the sharp jut of his hip, not fully visible. She thinks she can make out a torso, and arms. He screams, “ _I’m on my own now, I’m on my own now, oh god I’m on my own_.”

During the outro, Frank’s tense form seems to collapse in on itself. The hand that holds the mic drops to his side. He lets go of his shirt. The collar, newly stretched, sags a little more – the dark shadow on his chest just barely peeking out, touched by a slight sheen of sweat. _Definitely a tattoo,_ Karen thinks. 

Karen finds her breath coming in sharp bursts, in time with the pronounced rise and fall of Frank’s shoulders. She pushes a hand through her hair. She’s acutely aware of Micro’s eyes on her and the way she hasn’t said _anything_ in far, far too long. She clears her throat. Frank’s posture snaps at the sound. Head raising, eyes trained on her. Karen flushes.

“I’m _huuungry_ , dude, fuck,” Micro says suddenly, slumping forward onto their floor tom with dramatic flair. “That song takes too much out of me. I’m delicate. I want a sandwich.”

“Shit,” Rachel says, flipping up her wrist to look at her watch - large and utilitarian. Karen thinks it might be from her days serving. “We should all probably eat something.” She’s shrugging off her guitar before the others reply. Karen notices, now, that the design on her strap is simple – white skulls on a field of black, long in the teeth.

“I vote take out,” Kathy interjects. “Reporter should buy.” Her eyes land on Karen, daring.

“Hey,” Frank rasps. His eyes look far away, weight shifting back and forth from one leg to the other. Like he’s got one foot in this world and one in the place where he goes when he sings. Karen watches the dichotomy play out in his movements – quick and small. It makes the broad line of his shoulders hard to track. “Didn’t Dave just get food?”

Micro’s eyes light behind their glasses. “ _It’s Wednesday_ ,” they stage-whisper, mock-sacred. Karen’s brow furrows. She opens her mouth to ask, but Micro’s already answering, affording her a wide smile. They have deep, deep dimples in each cheek, a stray curl caught in the perspiration on their forehead. “Tuesday nights Spacker Dave goes to _Whole Foods_.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Kathy hums, shrugging off her bass. “I forgot the days switched. Hope he got roast beef. Whole Foods roast beef’s better than the Shop Rite shit.”

Leatherneck is quick to redirect, pulling off instruments and setting them down carefully. Micro skips across to the amps, flicking them off to kill the feedback that hums through the venue’s wide, open space. Rachel winds up cords, keeping everyone from tripping.

Karen frowns still. “There’s a kitchen here?” she asks, confused, before she can help it. It’s a _music venue_. Most bars don’t even have full kitchens.

“Spacker Dave an’ Quentin live here,” Kathy says as she hops off the stage. Her boots land on the paint-flecked floor with a heavy _thud_. “S’not exactly legal, city’s fascist fuckin’ housing code and all.” Her eyes flash so dark they seem to swallow all light, turn black. “You’re not gonna publish that, though, are you, Reporter?”

Karen shakes her head, raising her eyebrows – offended, honestly. “Nope,” she says, popping the ‘P’. “I’m not reporting on them, am I?”

Kathy huffs as Rachel swings down off the stage next to her. “C’mon. Sandwiches, then you can continue to antagonize the nice lady, Kath.” She touches Kathy’s elbow, gives Karen a long look that makes her feel like she’s being tested, and walks past them both.

Micro is next off the stage. “I’ll show you the way,” they offer, smiling again. They hold out their hand to Karen. Silver nail polish shimmers at their fingertips. 

“Thanks,” Karen breathes, tucking her things into her bag. She keeps her recorder on – no one’s told her to stop – and tucks it into the pocket of her cardigan. Micro raises an eyebrow when she does. She bites down on the inside of her cheek. “Do you want me to stop recording?” 

Micro shakes their head, another curl tugging loose from their top knot as they do. “Nah,” they reply, shrugging. “Frank trusts you, I trust you.”

Karen pauses at the words, something new ballooning in her chest. The feeling is – round, hollow, fragile, expanding out from her middle. Her eyes find Frank, then, onstage behind Micro, returning his microphone to the stand. He looks up. “Any reason I shouldn’t?” Frank asks, brusque, when he sees the look on her face. 

She feels herself flush (again) and ducks her head, letting her hair fall. Pulling her lips together, she tucks a lock behind her ear and tries not to shout something Frank doesn’t need to know. This isn’t about her. “No,” Karen breathes, forcing herself to return Frank’s gaze. There’s something tight in his mouth, in the lines (fine as they are) around his eyes. “None at all.” 

He nods once. A quick dip of his head. Karen exhales. She tugs her gaze back to Micro, who smiles, easy as can be. “C’mon we, gotta get there before Kathy eats all the good shit.” 

Micro leads her through a part of the warehouse Karen hadn’t even realized was reclaimed – if she could call it that. They lead her through a series of rooms and hallways that are partitioned off from the main space with everything from drywall to shower curtains strung on fishing line. There’s a sort of bedroom space they pass through – a bunk bed set; a pile of laundry Karen _swears_ moves when she walks past; a cracked mirror on one wall and a variety of old show flyers, lino prints, and informational posters about what to do if you’re stopped by the cops – there’s one “hallway” that’s lined entirely with waist-high piles of books in various states of disrepair: pages curling with water damage, missing covers, some labeled _ADVANCED READER COPY_.

The kitchen is surprisingly...kitchen-like, considering the rest of the haphazard living space. There’s a fridge, and though Karen can see the orange extension cords descending from the ceiling and down the wall to keep it running, it appears relatively clean. An electric oven rests in the corner - given the same treatment - and counters and cupboards in various finishes and materials. The whole place looks a bit like someone’s robbed a Home Depot showroom.

She’d linger in the doorway, try to take it all in, if she hadn’t heard Frank step into place behind her, his breath rattling just a few inches away. Karen doesn’t jump into the kitchen, but the careful look Rachel gives her from the center island – made entirely of plywood, the top covered in shoddily hammered sheet metal – tells Karen she’s not exactly inconspicuous. She looks at her shoes when she steps aside for Frank.

Leatherneck fans out once they’re all in the room. Rachel is already at the island, re-securing her hair in a bun before setting to chopping tomatoes with a royal blue vegetable knife. Kathy’s dumping tortilla chips into a dented metal bowl. Micro beelines for the fridge, pulling it open so hard that the flyers advertising a tenant's union wave from under their magnets. “ _Hell yeah,_ ” Micro cries, gleeful, “hummus!”

Frank slips out from behind Karen and goes for a high cabinet, withdrawing a can of beans and pulling out a sizeable, mean-looking black knife from somewhere Karen doesn’t see. He shoves the blade directly into the metal top of the can. Kathy cackles when she sees Karen’s eyes go wide.

“You alright, Reporter?” Kathy asks, and slides her bowl of tortilla chips towards her with a metallic scraping sound.

“M’fine,” Karen replies, too fast. She swallows. _Get your shit together, Page_. Karen forces herself to step forward and take a chip from the bowl. She raises a dark blonde eyebrow at her. “Are you?”

Kathy’s reply is an impossibly wide, rapacious grin. “Peachy keen, Legs.” She eats a chip.

“So you’re the only member of Leatherneck that wasn’t in the military?” Karen asks, pulling her notebook from her bag in single, swift motion. She leans against the island and flips it open.

The other woman chuckles at Karen, the sound tumbling out through her sharp teeth. It’s bitter, Kathy’s eyes darting up to the ceiling. Karen doesn’t ask anything else. Just waits.

“You’re right about that,” Kathy answers. “I was in the circus.” 

Right. Karen grinds her teeth, doesn’t let herself sigh out loud.

“I met Kathy because she started hanging around after she and Frank fucked,” Rachel says then, matter of fact, punctuated by the rhythm of the knife against the cutting board. She’s moved on from tomatoes to onions. There’s no sign of tears in her eyes.

Kathy stares at Rachel, smirking, before holding up another chip and shoving it in her mouth whole. Rachel rolls her eyes.

Karen swallows, and nods, but doesn’t make a note of it – because how is she supposed to include _that_ particular nugget of information? It seems entirely too personal.

But maybe these people have a different definition of _personal_.

She swallows again, reflexive, and pivots to address Rachel directly. If she wants to talk, Karen will seize the opportunity. “Frank said that you didn’t serve with him –” 

Rachel nods, cutting her off. “That’s right,” she says, setting down her knife and reaching for the brown paper bag on the counter, in front of the cutting board. From it she withdraws half a loaf of bread and begins to slice. “I was in the 2/4 outta Camp Pendleton. Frank and I met after we both got out.”

Before Karen can try another question, try to open up Rachel or Kathy’s closed replies, Micro snaps their fingers and shouts, “Hey!”

Karen follows their line of sight to Frank, who is shoveling beans into his mouth using the flat of his knife. “You risk botulism doing that,” Micro warns, frowning. They pull a small, scraped teflon pot off the stove and shove it down the counter towards Frank. “Cook your food.”

Frank looks at the pot in Micro’s extended hand and Karen looks at Frank. He’s somehow all long lines, leaning against the counter that faces the head of the island (where Karen is perched with Kathy and Rachel). Karen almost thinks _he looks slight_ , but she knows that’s wrong, has spent enough time watching him onstage or across from her at the diner to know he’s broad, a solid mass.

There’s a beat where Frank’s still got the knife in his mouth, cheeks puffed. Karen doesn’t know why she feels tense. Frank’s eyes tilt up and he pulls the knife from his mouth, a click when his teeth hit metal, before he flips it, tucking the blade against his wrist while he reaches out for the pot and pushes up from the counter.

Beans in one hand, knife and pot in the other, Frank slips between Micro and Rachel to the oven. The pot clinks against the stovetop and Frank sets his can of beans there, between the burners.

It happens too quickly for Karen to feel like she can even process the familiarity which colors every inch of the interaction. Her eyes are still on Frank’s can of beans when she says, “So you two met outside of the Marines.”

“Yep,” Frank says, matter-of-fact, as he pours the beans into the pot. There’s a clattering sound as he scrapes the sides of the can with his knife, getting every ounce of food out. “Buddy from my old platoon runs a support group. Rach was workin’ the desk. Kept bringing her guitar around – forgot how to play a B minor, once.” Frank’s mouth curls, a sly upward tilt that lightens his whole face, eyes playful. The stove hisses as the electric burner clicks on. 

Rachel scoffs. “Don’t be a dick,” she retorts and looks up at Karen, hands braced on the edge of the island. “I got out of the Corps after my husband died. I was in a bad way.” She jerks her head over her shoulder to where Frank stands behind her. “So was he. Fucked up attracts fucked up.”

Kathy tilts a tortilla chip towards Rachel. “Ain’t that the goddamn truth.”

Karen nods slowly, carefully trying to digest and categorize the easy camaraderie that seems to bounce between each member of the band like a ping-pong ball. She almost doesn’t want to ask questions; she’s too wrapped up in the scene that’s playing out in front of her. Rachel’s no-nonsense food prep; Kathy’s easy chatter; Frank’s business-like attack on his can of beans; Micro’s familiar, almost put-upon concern; how it all comes out like a practiced routine. She’s never seen anything like it – not even with friends of hers who had lived together all four years of college. 

But still – she _does_ have questions. And the improbable urge to prove her worth, that she deserves to be here. An actor in this scene.

“So that’s Frank and Kathy, Frank and Rachel…” She turns her attention to Micro. Her brow pinches when she asks, “So how does a former drone sensor turned whistleblower end up here?”

 She’s very, _very_ aware of Kathy’s gaze narrowing across from her, and the way Rachel stills. Frank watches Karen, too, stirring his beans on the stove with his knife. But she refuses to allow herself to look at any of them. 

Micro’s head pops out from behind the fridge door, shutting it with their shoulder. They’ve got cold cuts in their hands. “I suppose that _is_ the million dollar question,” they start, congenial and shrugging. Their ease does little to lighten the attention that the rest of Leatherneck is paying her, and Karen feels the nape of her neck heat. She grips her pen tighter to keep from reaching back, soothing the flush. 

“Well, to start, I _didn’t_ sleep with Frank,” Micro jokes. They come to a stop next to Karen, setting down their deli meats and beginning to assemble a sandwich with cold cuts and the bread and veggies Rachel prepped. They keep their eyes on Karen, hands moving in practiced motions. “I actually met Frank and Rachel on the subway. I think he thought I was in trouble.”

It’s this that shatters the odd tension. Frank’s face contorts into something Karen might call _begrudging amusement_ , and he scoffs, the sound half of a harsh laugh. “‘Magine that,” Frank says.

"You were dressed in red foam and shouting at three dudes four times your size," Rachel adds, without looking up as she starts to assemble her own sandwich.

Micro ducks their head – they’re a full foot shorter than Karen in her heels. Still, it feels like they’re letting Karen in on a secret when they peer up at her over their glasses. “I was a popsicle,” they state, as if it’s an obvious conclusion. “Some folks thought it was a good idea to pontificate on if I was one of those _transsexuals_.” Micro’s voice drops several octaves, mocking, on the last word.

Karen’s face twists in sympathy – god, she can’t imagine what that would feel like. 

Micro sees her expression, of course, making eye contact with her while they’re mid-bite of a rather large sandwich. They shrug as they finish chewing. “Frank’s more into direct action. I got them fired later. Found their names on some white supremacist subreddit and forwarded it to their bosses.”

“Ay,” Frank interjects, hoarse. He’s turned off the stove now, back to leaning against the counter, holding the pot of beans with one hand. He’s still eating with his goddamn knife. “That shit you do with the computers, that works.” 

Micro gives a gracious bow, pageant-waving the hand that isn’t holding their sandwich up. “Thank you, thank you,” they reply, grinning. When they straighten back up, they chuckle softly. “‘The computers’,” they echo, shaking their head. “Frank here still uses a flip phone.”

Karen raises an eyebrow at Frank despite herself. He shrugs, mid-bite. Once he’s finished chewing, he offers, “If it ain’t broke.” 

Kathy shoves Rachel’s cutting board towards Karen. She’s somehow managed to make herself a sandwich without Karen noticing. “You eatin’, Reporter?” she asks. “Dave got good shit from the dumpster this week.” 

It’s this final aside, of all things, that breaks her composure. _Dumpster._ That shouldn’t matter and it shouldn’t surprise her, considering she’s sitting in the slightly-illegal kitchen of a more-than-slightly-illegal apartment in a warehouse that she’s pretty sure runs on stolen electricity. The concept of _dumpster diving_ isn’t foreign to her. Hell, there were a handful of so-called ‘freegans’ on her floor her junior year of college, but. It’s still a shock to her middle-class sensibilities and she hates herself for it as it happens, but Karen _stares_ at the food on the countertop and whispers, “ _The fuck_?”

Kathy’s reply is to dissolve into satisfied laughter, her narrow shoulders shaking with it. For a long moment, the only thing more irritating than Kathy’s belly-laugh is the heat in Karen’s cheeks. Her gaze doesn’t linger anywhere too long: the countertop; Micro’s hands on their sandwich; Rachel’s mouth, only half hiding a smirk; then to the floor.

The sound of Frank wiping his knife on his thigh makes Karen’s eyes dart towards him. His eyes are tight, narrowed in their careful study of her, but the set of his cheeks write gentle amusement across his features.  

With burning cheeks, Karen swallows, forces herself to push her hair from her face. She’s here. She’s a journalist and she’s already let them know she’s scared. Shit. Karen jerks her gaze away from Frank, who scoops another helping of beans into his mouth. His eyes crinkle in the hyper second they meet Karen’s before she looks away.

“Give me that,” she says, too fast, and reaches for the bread.

Karen fills the memory of her recorder with Leatherneck’s dinner chatter. Kathy cracking jokes at Karen’s expense while Rachel tries to steer the discussion towards planning for a tour they’re departing on in August. Micro taps out notes into their phone while they and Rachel run through their venue contacts, with Frank adding the occasional interjection. He suggests locations, venues – a handful of VFW halls in upstate New York – all while washing out the pot he’d used to cook his beans, and his knife, which he slips into his boot without fanfare.

Jesus, she hadn’t even realized he’d been armed. (Not that he wasn’t dangerous without it anyway, a more logical part of her brain supplies, echoing Ellison’s apprehensions back to her.)

Leatherneck returns to practice once everyone’s finished eating. Karen’s own sandwich – comprised of tomatoes, lettuce, hummus and definitely _no_ cold cuts – sits somewhere just above her diaphragm. She tries not to let herself dwell on the fact that she’s just eaten garbage vegetables. Lucky for her, settled back in her chair, Leatherneck playing through the majority of their catalogue is enough sensory overload to keep her anxiety at bay.

She keeps her recorder perched on one knee, unsure of how to inform them that she’s run out of storage and should probably leave them to their night.

Instead, Karen watches them run through songs, pausing occasionally to tease out a suggestion of Micro’s for a switch in the drum fill on _Leviathan_ , or for Rachel to try a new chord progression in the start of _Bodysnatchers_. For Leatherneck, the songs are transmutable, Karen finds. They might not have put out a full-length in the last seven years (busying themselves with touring, contributing to Marvel compilations, releasing covers and the occasional EP), but that doesn’t mean Leatherneck’s sound is stagnating.

By the time their practice is winding down – with longer pauses between songs, Micro and Kathy’s chattiness increasing, like distracted children – the late afternoon sun is all but gone from the high windows of The Safehouse.

Karen hears a door thud behind her. As she turns in her chair, Micro calls, “Hey Q! We’re just finishing up!” and Karen’s eyes land on _the_ other _fucking asshole from The Chaste_.

Pink hair, swooped up in a surprisingly elegant hybrid between a mohawk and a pompadour. T-shirt that reads _EAT THE RICH_ under a ratty black blazer, lapels weighted down with buttons. This latest arrival’s black shorts end just above their knees, and they’re wearing heavy black combat boots. The ensemble is topped off by a familiar, blisteringly condescending expression.

 _Q_ must refer to the second half of The Safehouse’s permanent residents, _Quentin_.

Quentin, whose gaze is trained on Karen as they approach the stage, hands shoved deep into their pockets. They wear large, round glasses with thin wire frames. The effect is that of a punk Harry Potter.

“Who’s this?” Quentin asks in lieu of an actual greeting. Their voice is just as nasal and judgmental as Karen remembers it. 

“Reporter,” Kathy answers as Karen forces herself up, gripping her recorder and her thin notebook in one hand so tight her knuckles ache. “Frank brought her.” 

Karen sweeps her hand down her skirt – pencil, gray linen, _professional,_ which here means _enemy_ – and sticks out her free hand when she’s finished, stepping forward into Quentin’s orbit. She smiles hard enough to make her teeth hurt, the wisdom tooth she’s actively not dealing with digging into her gums. “Karen Page,” she says, forceful.

The disdain is apparent in Quentin’s round face. Their expression is sharp, despite their baby cheeks. It looks a bit like they’re sucking on a lemon. Quentin looks at Karen’s hand and Karen looks at Quentin, arching one eyebrow a hairsbreadth. She’s spent the day practicing the art of the journalistic _fuck you._ Quentin is a prime chance to try out the new skillset.

They shake. “Excellent,” they reply, dry enough that Karen can literally feel herself dehydrating as they shake hands. Quentin’s are rough, chapped and sooty. Huh. Karen doesn’t allow herself to wipe her hand on her skirt when their handshake ends. 

“Think we’re about done here, Quentin,” Frank says suddenly, before Karen can ask about Quentin’s hands, and before Quentin can voice whatever tart response is brewing behind their sour expression. 

Karen turns her head back towards the stage. Frank’s rolling up the microphone cord; Rachel crouches in front of her pedalboard, methodically breaking it down. Even Kathy has somehow set to work in the brief moment it’s taken for Quentin to scrutinize Karen. She’s futzing with her amp and basshead, not keeping tabs on Karen for the first time all night.

Micro climbs out from behind their kit, grinning. “I’ll hang,” they say as they jump down from the stage. “Help set up for Youth Slam tonight.” They turn and offer Karen one of their continually renewed, kind smiles. “There’s a monthly youth poetry slam Quentin puts on,” they explain, walking over to a stack of milk crates beside the far corner of the stage. They drop a couple on the ground, aiming to reach one buried towards the bottom. There’s a rustling as they pull out a legal-sized sheet of paper, marked in pink and orange block-printing ink. “This is The Safehouse’s programming schedule for July.” They walk over, holding it out to her. 

Karen smiles back, grateful. “Thanks,” she says, quiet. She looks down – it looks hand-printed. Just enough variation for human error in the layering of color. Karen’s sure the paper’s handmade, recycled, thick and soft in her fingers. The calendar lists different things: shows every weekend night, a _Gay Goth Nite_ , weekly meetings for an Industrial Workers of the World chapter, a _Food Not Bombs_ monthly meal, even self-defense classes.

Quentin audibly shifts their weight. Karen can hear the jingle of metal – change in their pockets as they shove their hands into them, their pins clattering together when their suit jacket moves. Karen draws her gaze back up to them, willing to respond to the passive aggressive request for attention even before they clear their throat. They have to keep their chin jerked high to make it seem like they’re looking down at her.

She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from snorting. 

“Most of those events are off the record,” Quentin says, the warning clear.

She nods. “Yeah,” she breathes. “Kinda got that vibe.” If it’s a little mean sounding, then. Oh well. 

Quentin’s eyes narrow. “Good.”

There’s a series of heavy footsteps and Frank appears next to Karen, his jacket back on despite the fact that it’s nearing mid-July, the sweat from a long practice still drying on his skin. His hands are shoved into the pockets. She can see a mark of wear on the shoulder, a small cluster of white thread pilling at the seam.

“You heading out?” he asks, apropos of nothing. His gaze is fixed on Karen, head tilted just so to make complete eye contact with her. She can see, this close, the texture of his skin – a smattering of small scars above one eye, another on his cheek. Each of them only visible from a certain angle, in a certain light.

She nods, blinking, and drops her gaze to tuck her belongings away in her purse. “Uh, yeah,” she says softly, shouldering the bag. “Thank you, for uh –”

“Mhm,” Frank grunts, cutting her off. “I’ll walk you out.” It’s strange – almost formal. Karen feels a bit like she’s being pulled away from Quentin like a vaudeville comic, yanked offstage with a cane round her neck. Frank’s gaze darts to Quentin. He gives them a curt nod. “Quentin.”

Quentin throws Frank a sardonic salute before walking away. Frank just grunts, face blank.

Karen can’t fight the frown that draws over her features when she and Frank start out of The Safehouse. It’s the sickly feeling of being treated like a _child_ that had begun to crawl up Karen’s spine when he’d interrupted her and Quentin. It just intensifies when Frank holds the door open for her, before following her outside. 

“You know I’m perfectly capable of leaving a building myself,” she says, spinning on the sidewalk just outside the warehouse.

Frank’s shoulders hunch as he looks at her, stopped in his tracks. His brow furrows and his mouth drops open, just slightly. His gaze flits from side to side and Karen can almost hear him thinking _are you serious?_ It only heightens her frustration.

“Ain’t you I was worried about,” he says plainly, dropping his shoulders. He withdraws from one pocket a pack of green-boxed Marlboro menthols and taps out a cigarette, before pulling a scuffed lighter from another pocket on his chest with bruised fingers. In a smooth, practiced motion, he tucks the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and lights it. Karen listens to the sound of the lighter click.

Exhaling smoke, Frank continues, “Quentin’s got good principles. Dad’s a real rich prick, though. It’s rubbed off.”

Karen exhales, annoyance deflating in her chest. She studies Frank, who is watching her out of the corner of his eye, head ducked while he pulls on his cigarette. One finger taps against the lighter still clutched in his other hand. Karen thinks she shouldn’t be able to hear his nail flicking against the hard plastic, given that they’re outside, standing on a curb in Manhattan. But still. She hears it. The same staccato note he’d tapped at the diner, a resting frequency.

“Huh,” is all she manages to say. Frank had read her irritation towards Quentin immediately, even wrapped in the thin newsprint of her brittle, professional smile. Either he’s very good, or Karen’s worse than she thought.

And now –

Now Frank knows she doesn’t like Quentin. He doesn’t seemed bothered by it. “Are they always, um…” she trails off when the exact word escapes her.

“A wall to wall asshole?” Frank asks, looking back up. His eyebrows are raised.

The phrasing is so dead-on it draws a sudden peal of laughter from Karen, flying out of her before she can wrestle it down. The force of it surprises her, turning her ears and cheeks pink. She goes to cover her mouth, only to abort the childish motion at the last possible second, instead dropping her gaze from Frank and tugging a hand through her hair. “Uh, yeah,” she breathes, flushed and pivoting on the balls of her feet, turning to face the street.

Her eyes dart back over towards him. He’s back to watching her with the same intense, sober consideration she’s gotten from him all day. This time, accompanied by a cigarette. _Wall to wall asshole_. She swallows another laugh. It’s the specific alchemy of the phrase in combination with Frank’s dry candor that gets her. She pulls her hand down the side of her face, touching her fingers to her mouth, desperately trying to control her reaction.

“I really, uh – shouldn’t,” she murmurs, almost to herself. Because she _shouldn’t_ , she’s a goddamn journalist. _Get it together._

Frank exhales loudly, breath rattling. Karen looks over towards him, then decides to fidget with her bag in lieu of touching her face. She feels – extremely aware of herself right now. Frank looks her over. 

What Karen _should_ be doing is leaving. She should have ended this interview hours ago, when her recorder’s memory ran out. Maybe even before dinner. But she can’t let go of it; can’t seem to uncurl her fingers from the story. She’s missing something, can feel it in her gut.

She sucks in a breath and flips her wrist up, checking her watch. Beaded bracelets slide against her skin with the motion, accompanied by a faint clinking. It’s a quarter to eight. She’s spent four hours here, long enough for the sun to be steadily setting over New Jersey across the Hudson. She should go home. 

“So. Where you headed?” Frank asks, punctuating her thoughts.

“Uh.” She panics. _Home_? She can’t say _home_ because first of all, her apartment isn’t even _home_. It’s just a place where she sleeps. Eats, sometimes. And. Christ, wouldn’t that just sound goddamn childish. _I’m going home_. God. “The office?”

He steps farther out onto the sidewalk, face still set. “You mind company?”

The sun hangs low, dipping fast into the horizon. Night’s barely starting to creep in, the sky darkening and shifting color like a fresh bruise. Frank’s focus alternates between Karen’s face and the air over her left shoulder. Catching a cab to go five blocks doesn’t seem necessary. And if Frank’s in the mood to talk, well.

Except. She shouldn’t. She should walk away from this. She has her notes, and hours (literal _hours_ ) of audio to transcribe. She should be done.

“That’s. I mean. Thank you, but that’s not necessary.” There’s a polite, self-effacing laugh lacing her voice that Karen wants to tear out, discard with the litter on the sidewalk. 

Frank’s face is framed by smoke, expression unchanging. The scrutiny in his gaze is barely tempered by a silence that comes off more curious than judgmental. _P-U-N-I_ flashes on his knuckles each time he takes a drag.

Karen ducks her head, her hair falling between them. She works her jaw and takes a deep breath before clarifying, “The subject walking the journalist back to work.” Karen forces her gaze back up, tucking her hair behind her ear once more. Her eyes meet Frank’s. “Maybe not the most, y’know…” she trails off. 

Frank’s face offers nothing, only the slow exhale of smoke through his nostrils.

“Professional.” _Christ_ , he’s just standing there.  

But then Frank snorts, abrupt, and tucks his lighter back in his pocket. He takes a step towards her. “Right,” he starts, mouth hanging open slightly, crows feet folding at the corners of his eyes. He rocks exaggeratedly to one side, momentarily looking at Karen from another angle. “And showing up unannounced to a stranger’s place of work to berate ‘em into talking to you is, what?”

Heat rushes to Karen’s face, gathering in her cheeks, at the tops of her ears. Her lungs tighten, a flash of embarrassment. Then the pang of mortification molts, quickly ascending to a stinging anger at the fact that, apparently, Frank Castle is going to tell her how to do her job.

Because – because – shouldn’t Frank Castle, of all goddamn people, _know_ professional journalism – _respectability_ journalism – isn’t actually worth shit? That when reporters don’t chase a story with a starved dog’s logic about bones _nothing_ comes from it? Journalism isn’t asking nice questions at press conferences; it’s guerrilla warfare.

She boils over in a matter of seconds. “Excuse me?” Karen breathes, harsh. An angry set takes to her brow and she crosses her arms over her chest, shifting her weight to wheel the full outrage in her face on Frank.

Frank’s body rearranges itself into asymmetry – his center of gravity sliding to one side, one eye wider than the other – as he absorbs her reaction. Impossibly, it makes him look at once severe and serene. There’s a slight twitch in his face, visible in the miniscule movements of the lines around his eyes, jaw working. 

He doesn’t reply. 

Karen inhales sharply through her nose. Her blood feels too hot for her body. She taps her foot once, frenzied energy buzzing in her limbs. Frank’s silence only deepens her indignation, left with no response to feed off of. “You don’t know a _goddamn thing_ about _me_ ,” she hisses. Distantly, she’s aware this might not be a proportionate response. But she’s locked into her anger now – teeth burrowed into the flesh of it.

(She remembers her only real ‘fight’ with her mother; she must have been twelve, maybe thirteen. It had started with a fight at school – a call home from the principal, about Karen shoving another girl into a wall during lunch. Karen didn’t remember doing it, but remembered the paranoia, the sick feeling in her stomach when she heard laughter behind her in the lunchroom, in P.E., in free period. 

Her mother – shocked, angry, worried – had tried to get the story out of her, after. But it was fragmented, punctuated by Karen’s anger and fear. 

There’d been shouting. Karen’s memory is seared with her mother’s one true moment of exasperation. When she replays the memory, she can see the tiredness in her mother’s eyes. _You’re like a – a – a_ pitbull, _Karen. You don’t know when to let things go_.)

“It’s more complicated than that and you know it,” Karen continues. “It’s not like I just _showed up_. I tried other channels and got absolute _bullshit_ from Marvel’s press contact. The fact that no one’s ever tried going around her before _isn’t_ my fault. You’re not exactly hard to find, either. Just because no one else seems to give a shit about actually _talking_ to you doesn’t make me less –”

Frank Castle is still staring at her. His cigarette is burning away, held at his side. City lights are beginning to flicker on around them. 

Karen cuts herself off. The initial, hot rush of adrenaline is rapidly turning to a sluggish, cold drag through her system, like a sunburn doused in water. Her breath is shaky when she exhales. _Shit_. Her gaze trails down to her shoes on the pavement. She scuffs a heel against a metal plaque on the sidewalk, marking a Works Progress Administration project. Running a hand through her hair, she makes herself look up again. “Jesus Christ.”  

The crease in Frank’s forehead deepens, one eyebrow barely higher than the other. “You done?” he asks, lifting his cigarette to his lips. The scent of the menthol filter is acrid when he exhales, nostrils flaring. Karen says nothing into the smoke.

Frank continues, leaning forward incrementally. Something locks in his expression, both eyebrows raised, now. “I am only gonna say this once: I agreed to this shit ‘cause you seemed like a pain in the ass –”

Karen almost bares her teeth. What kind of fucking – _infantilizing bullshit_ –

“And a pain in the ass gets the job done, right?” he finishes. Frank jerks his head in an approximation of a nod. His voice has taken on a rougher quality. Guttural. “But you gotta get one thing straight, lady: _I am_ not _your enemy_.” His gaze slides over Karen’s shoulder again. He lifts the hand not holding the cigarette, pointing towards whatever’s behind her. Karen’s eyes track the heavy, black _S_ inked into his index finger.

Karen turns her head. There’s a police cruiser, idling a block away. “ _There’s_ your enemy.” He pauses, as if trying to stress the importance of this conversation, of Karen understanding him.

The cruiser seems uninterested in them. But Karen’s not an idiot; she knows there’s a problem with the police in this country. She’s known it for a long time, early childhood memories of her father doing the dishes, singing, _Will you be a union man or a thug for Sheriff Blair?_

And in light of their conversation at the diner (and the general milieu of The Safehouse), Karen knows he doesn’t just mean the cops. It’s more far reaching than that, bigger. Bigger than Frank’s attitude problem. Bigger than a punk on the sidewalk seeing a cop car and thinking, _pig_.

If the time they’ve spent together has taught Karen anything, it’s that Frank knows precisely the length to which any government-issued uniform cannot be trusted.

“So don’t waste your or my goddamn time being a pain in _my_ ass. Take it down about eight notches in the defensive bullshit department, yeah?” he says, scathing. Frank’s eyes linger on her, even as he’s still got his hand in the air, pointing, accusatory. Then he takes another drag on his cigarette, letting his left hand drop back to his side. “I wouldn’t have agreed to this if I didn’t think you could cover your own ass.”

It’s a backhanded compliment if Karen’s ever heard one. And it’s just this side of familiar – the age old cries of _calm down_ , of _care just a little less, Karen_. It takes all of her self control to keep from scoffing. Karen keeps her eyes trained on the police cruiser, sure her frustration is writ all over her face, because that’s her life.

“And if you wanna be pissed off, that’s fine,” Frank continues, an inch of quiet moving into his tone. Like easing off the gas pedal, his voice calms. Karen turns her head towards him, finally. He shrugs when she makes eye contact with him and finishes, simply, “Pissed off beats scared every time.”

Karen stares. His words strike a bell in her ribcage and resonate, crystal clear. _Pissed off beats scared every time_.

(A therapist, court-mandated and the special sort of Professionally Kind that goes hand-in-hand with a smile that doesn’t ever quite reach past the cheeks, wearing a maroon turtleneck and leaning forward to touch her knee, had told her, _You can let go of that anger, Karen_.

But her anger wasn’t new. It wasn’t because of _what happened_. It was _how_ what happened, happened.

Two sessions later, that same therapist had said, _Anger is a result of our flight or fight response, but you’re not in danger anymore, Karen._ )

The wind shifts and the smoke of Frank’s cigarette blows into her nose. It brings Karen blinking back from the memory, her heart beating like a hammer in her chest. Her lungs can’t quite get enough air and when she breathes in, all she can taste is menthol smoke, bitter. Metallic. She lets it tear at the inside of her throat and nods.

Karen tucks a lock of her hair behind an ear. “Okay,” she breathes, quiet. She forces herself to swallow, to _calm down_ , to nod once, twice. “If you’re headed uptown anyway.”

Frank only grunts in reply, so Karen decides the safest bet is to just start walking. If he follows, she supposes it’s a free country. She doesn’t feel any need to reach for the stun gun in her purse at the idea of him walking down the sidewalk after her.

What surprises Karen isn’t that he falls into step beside her, heavy boots scuffing the sidewalk, weaving with the sharp tap of her heels on concrete. 

No. It’s the disarmingly comfortable silence that lingers with them for two blocks, Karen’s path back towards _AltTrish’_ s studios leading down the last blocks before the Hudson itself. It’s cooler, the closer they walk to the water, offering up a modicum of relief from the balmy July heat.

She almost asks how Frank can stand to wear that jacket of his, before a vision of Frank weighted down in fatigues, heavy boots, and whatever else the Marine Corps had issued him in order to survive springs to mind. 

In high school, she had to read _The Things They Carried_ for AP English. She thinks about the laborious pages that open the book, detailing the weight of rifles, grenades, flak jackets. 

In her mind’s eye, she places that tonnage on him, tries to call back the Frank from _before_. Captain Frank Castle, of the United States Marine Corps. The image forms in her head easier than she thought it would, eyes searching over his close-cropped hair, the wide set of his shoulders. The force of his stare (which she doesn’t have to search for at all - familiar with the weight of it, now).

 _Their principles were in their feet._ Her teacher had made them all underline it, but Karen had never been able to suss the precise meaning. Except, maybe now - _maybe_ \- she understands. The fact that Leatherneck’s known not for their sparse catalogue - for _Tiny Ugly World_ or _Front Toward Enemy_ or any number of political folk standards transmuted into furious, electrified covers for a new generation. They’re known as a touring band; for their work ethic, their lack of compromise. The relentless march forward.

She thinks about that: about touring, about Kathy catching Micro’s drumsticks mid-air, about the kind of familiarity required to move around each other the way Leatherneck do.

Karen’s speaking before she realizes. Her forehead creases, line of thought not fully formed before she says, “Seems like being part of a unit is important to you.”

Frank’s expression screws up a little at that. He raises his cigarette to his lips, inhales without looking away from her. Karen adjusts her bag on her shoulder, holds his gaze. She tilts her head after a moment, waits.

“It is,” he says, finally.

It can only be thirty seconds or so, but feels like minutes before Frank speaks again, apprehensive. “You got something to say?” 

Karen slows, heart in her throat. When she’d started talking she hadn’t thought she’d get here, hadn’t known this was what she meant to ask. She realizes with a jolt that she’s wanted this answer for hours now, the question gestating in the back of her skull ever since Rachel said _fucked up attracts fucked up._ Before then, maybe. 

And now Frank has stopped walking, standing a few feet behind Karen, now. She turns, looks at him, and it’s so intensely fucking _personal_ that she has no idea what to expect next. No clue as to how royally what she’s about to say might fuck up the balance they’ve struck, in the few blocks they’ve walked since leaving The Safehouse.

“You were shot by one of your own. Earlier you – ” Karen cuts herself off, whetting her lips, and takes a small step towards Frank. “You described being in the humvee, right before it happened. And now you spend months out of the year in a van with three other people, two of whom are ex-military. Another marine. I just wonder if that’s tough, for you. If it ever feels too, uhm. Familiar?” 

Frank’s swaying in front of her, thumb worrying the filter of the cigarette held at his side. A plume of smoke curls up over his shoulder, disappearing into the air over his head. His adam’s apple bobs convulsively, and Karen swallows. 

Abruptly, he starts walking again. His shoulder nearly brushes Karen’s when he passes by, and she raises her eyebrows, blue eyes going wide for the panicked second she thinks he’s gonna turn a corner and just leave her there.

But he stops soon enough, looks back at her over his shoulder. Expectant.

Relief floods Karen’s chest. She takes a few steps, coming up beside him, and they both start moving again. Karen takes a deep breath, resolved to wait as long as she has to. She can’t be the one to break the silence - that much she knows. 

Then, mercifully, Frank starts talking. “I had two families, right?” Frank offers, tongue swiping his lower lip. “Had my folks here, and I had my unit.” He frowns, jaw ticcing. Karen figures he’s choosing his words. “There were times, whether I wanted to admit it or not, when I’d rather have been neck deep in blood and bullets and shit and be with my unit than come back here. That’s something I made peace with, long time ago. But Rachel, Kathy, Micro. We’re not under contract. We do what we do because we choose to, right? Every day. Ten years, they got my back, I got their back.”

He takes another puff. “My, ah. Mom had already passed, when I joined up. My old man was still around, and I had.” He stops short, gaze distant. “I had… people, y’know. Guess I thought the Corps was… I didn’t have a goddamn clue what else I could do with my life. And then it all just.”

Frank licks his lips, takes a last deep drag from his cigarette before pinching off the cherry between two calloused fingertips and throwing the butt in a trashcan. He has to reach around Karen to do it, displaced air brushing the back of her neck when he does.

When he slides back into place, his eyes aren’t on her. They’re looking across the street, back onto the glow of the city. She follows his gaze, lets him lead her eyes to One World Trade Center, blue beacon at the top glowing, veiled by the summer’s nighttime smog. In the daylight, it’s still shiny and new – sunlight reflecting and refracting off glass so bright it makes the tower look counterfeit, like it’s been Photoshopped into the skyline.

“I saw the towers go down, Karen,” Frank says, low. His eyes are still up, focused on the unevenness of the space where one tower stands in place of two. “I wanted to react. Wanted to _fight_.” Frank’s voice sinks on the word, low; a little angry. “Saying goes, they break you down, build you back up. Build you stronger, yeah? And once you’re a marine you’re never not a marine again. That shit, it. It’s something to hold onto. And it holds onto you.”

His dark eyes flash, upper lip momentarily pulled into a sneer. Then, suddenly, Frank stops, face blank. His body still in a way that sets Karen on edge - he’s not rocking, not fidgeting. Frozen.

Karen nods. It’s slow, careful. “Is that what you were looking for? You know… after?” She swallows. “Something else to hold onto?”

Frank blinks back from wherever he’d gone in his head and looks at her. His eyes dart back and forth, searching Karen’s. “Maybe,” he breathes, before he ducks his head and moves again, Karen falling into step beside him. “Yeah.”

He’s quiet, for another cluster of footsteps, then continues: “The Corps owns your ass, y’know? And there’s security in that. You know the rules. The consequences.”

Soon enough his footsteps slow again, gradually, so as not to pull Karen up short this time. They both come to a stop just along the river. The water smells pungent in the summer heat, compounded by the lingering scent of Frank’s cigarette smoke.

He withdraws another, standing at an angle so Karen can see his face. The motion is practiced, easy. His eyes duck down for a second when he positions the cigarette between his lips and lights it, hands cupped to shield the flame from the breeze sliding in off the mouth of the Hudson.

Karen turns her body, studying his features in the flare of orange light. For a moment his face is populated by deep shadows, the fan of his eyelashes contrasting with the glow against his skin. She takes in the set of Frank’s shoulders, his weight alternating from foot to foot as he takes his first drag. He exhales deeply, twisting his lips to aim the smoke away from Karen’s face.

“I understand consequences, I – I believe in them. The cost of things, you know?” he continues, taking another quick puff and speaking on the exhale, “You can’t be in the shit and not appreciate the cost. Of stupidity, laziness, bad intel. Being a chickenshit. And there’s a clear purpose. Or, y’know, you think there is.”

Karen doesn’t know what to make of the sentence. He ends on a near-whisper, jaw working. Eyes still downcast. He flicks ash from the tip of his cigarette, thumb working against the filter. It’s less conspicuous than his typical fidgeting. Karen wonders, idly, if he took up smoking just to keep his hands busy.

They start walking again.

“First time I fired a gun was in the Corps. I was eighteen years old, enlisted a couple weeks after my birthday. I felt that click, y’know? I was good at it. The straighter you shoot, the cleaner it feels.”

Karen’s brow furrows and she sucks in a quick breath, questions on the tip of her tongue. But she doesn’t ask them. Frank isn’t done. Her eyes veer between concentrating on the sidewalk and stealing glances at Frank’s profile. He doesn’t look at her. 

“But it ain’t clean, right?” Frank sighs. “You start…seeing things, you couldn’t see before. Tell yourself the truths that. That feel like lies.”

When Karen glances at him again, she sees his focus cut momentarily down and to the side, somewhere near Karen’s feet. His tongue darts over his lip, once.

“Us or them. Every casualty on the other side means one less shooting at us. One less bomb stuffed under someone’s shirt.” Another pull on the cigarette, hard enough Karen can hear the faint crumpling sound of tobacco burning. “Christ, there’s nothing in this world I hate as much as a goddamn bomb.”

His upper lip curls momentarily in disgust, before he continues, “At some point you see what you are, or what you. What you could be, you know? And you either ride it or do what’s required to change it. I needed to…to come home, yeah? I loved being a marine, but I was. I needed to square that, what that means. What it could mean.”

They’ve made it to the water now, skyline a structure made of light in the distance. They wander, buffeted against the railing dividing the walkway from the rocks leading down to the river. 

Frank frowns, braces his forearms against the barrier, leans forward. His eyes are fixed in a thousand yard stare out across the water. She can’t tell if Frank’s avoiding her eyes on purpose now or if this is just how he needs to be, having this conversation. Not that she minds the time to familiarize herself with his profile, filing it away for when she’s alone with her sketchbook, later. 

But then Frank turns, looks straight at her. He meets Karen’s eyes with a hushed fervor that pins her in place, against the railing. He’s shifting his feet, eyes a little shiny, almost dark gold in the reflected light of the street lamps. His focus cuts through her. Karen wants to know what he sees. 

“During, it’s just training,” Frank says. He’s still speaking quietly. There’s a harsh timbre to his voice, but it’s not cruelty, not annoyance. Something weary and inescapable. “You know your weapon, your body. A person is a mechanism, yeah? They can be dismantled. You reach into the parts of a man that make him dead. A bullet, a knife, your hands. Simple.”

Something in Karen’s stomach bottoms out. _You reach into the parts of a man that make him dead_. Blood on the carpet, so much blood she can’t tell who it belongs to – can’t remember, maybe, where each of them stood, where the blood was coming from. The horrible sound, wet. Sucking.

“But it’s different, after,” Frank continues. “The lines get...blurred.” Karen tries to control her breathing. She presses her side into the metal railing and latches onto the sound of Frank’s voice. The softness in it. He breaks his eyes from hers. They roam, taking in the river, the street parallel to them, whatever it is he keeps looking for over Karen’s shoulder. “You start thinking maybe, maybe you’re supposed to be there, in blood and dirt and shit. Like it’s _home_.”

Frank sneers on that word, _home_. Karen has no idea what to say to him. Her left hand shifts forward without her permission, as if to touch Frank’s shoulder. She grips her purse strap instead. Tight enough that her periwinkle lacquered nails dig into her palm. The sharp pain grounds her, holds her here. 

He looks at her another long moment before blinking, shaking his head and looking back out over the water. It’s dark enough now that the bruising on his face is darker too, pulling shadows from the ever deepening evening sky. They seem by turns black or purple, depending on how he holds himself, from what angle the street lights catch his face.

“Then I got friendly-fucked in the head and they were done with me. Didn’t have to lift a finger.”

Something in Karen’s chest wrenches. There’s a deep, deep sadness in the way Frank finishes his speech. It’s in his words, in the slant of his shoulders as he leans over the railing and looks out at the blackness of the Hudson, slashed with reflected light. It’s fully dark now, the city’s electric hum illuminating Frank’s features. 

“Frank,” Karen whispers, barely audible. Her voice is brittle, a hairline fracture splintering his name. She swallows and tries again, feeling herself flush. “Frank. I’m so sorry.”

He’s quiet for a beat. The wind and the city and the river fill the silence between them. She can see the shift in his shoulders as Frank takes a breath. Their walk – slow, full of stops and starts – is almost over. Karen can literally see her office, over Frank’s shoulder. He’s still leaning against the rail separating the walkway from the putrid riverbanks of the Hudson, forearms braced against wrought iron. The end of his cigarette glows in the low light. Karen watches his finger worry the filter, his head bobbing in time with the movement. Eyes dart over his shoulder surreptitiously.

The slope of his posture makes her taller than him, makes him tilt his gaze up to meet hers. It’s a long moment before he does. The crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes fold, barely perceptible in the dark. His expression tilts up. A subtly raised eyebrow; a gentle lift in his cheek.

“You’re all heart, huh?” he asks, quiet as wind through trees.

Karen exhales. She doesn’t know how to respond to the question. If she’s _supposed_ to respond to it. The hand she has wrapped around the strap of her bag fidgets. It seems – too astute an observation, too caked with meaning, to come from someone she barely knows. Someone who _she’s_ supposed to be learning about.

It feels as though the ground under Karen has shifted, spinning the both of them around one hundred and eighty degrees.

“How –” she starts, breathless. “How do you figure?”

That draws another low chuckle out of him, one that he punctuates with a drag on his cigarette before answering, “It’s all over your face.” He says it simply, like it’s obvious, applying the same tone he’d use to comment on the weather.

Karen takes a breath; Frank continues.

“And that’s –” he sighs, adjusting. Frank stands now, facing her. His weight’s still uneven, leaning against the rail. “That’s good, yeah? Because you gotta give a shit, that’s what you gotta do. But back there? I didn’t give a shit; couldn’t, you know?” Frank’s words are as fast as his voice is soft, grouped almost in couplets. His jaw works as he speaks, pressing his weight against the barrier.

His eye contact breaks with Karen’s, looking around. “Yeah,” Frank breathes. He finishes his cigarette, puts it out with his boot. “What we did over there…” Frank sighs, gaze roaming again. “Wasn’t war. Not like we were used to. Not like we were told it was gonna be.”

Frank’s hands fist into his pockets. “All this? It’s just about figuring out what to do when the gunfire stops, Karen.”

A muscle clenches in his jaw, once. His eyes, somber and brown, meet hers for a brief moment. “You take care, yeah?” 

She nods before she’s aware he’s saying goodbye. Karen watches Frank Castle walk off into the night. She shivers in the breeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELCOME TO MIC VERSE PART 2: IT GETS POLITICAL 
> 
> this fic is… a lot, y'all. #teammicverse have blown it outta the damn park. sadie fucking killed it. if there's a line you love, i promise that sadie probably wrote it. her handle on frank is INCREDIBLE. sam's been a fantastic beta and gr9 wife. 
> 
> thank Y'ALL for reading. we'll see ya with an update in… the soon future? it took us what, a month and a half? sometime in the new year.


	2. Summer 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiiiiiiya! so there's been a bit of a delay… we know. but hey this chapter is WAY longer than the last? so, perks i hope? we'll keep this short and meet y'all at the bottom
> 
> disclaimers, music sourcing: as always, leatherneck's tunes are leathermouth songs; arsenic & old lace's music is a combination of gouge away and worriers. both are incredible bands that i definitely recommend checking out. 
> 
> content warnings: graphic depictions of violence/gore, ableism/ableist language, PTSD related flashbacks, racism (if these warnings are inadequate, please let me know and we will add whatever y'all suggest)

**To:** kpage@altpress.com  
**From:** mellison@vice.com  
**Sub:** Re: Castle profile DRAFT 

You know this is shit, right?

\--  
Mitchell Ellison  
Editor in Chief, Noisey

 Attachment: What_Makes_a_Hero_?.docx

 

Karen curses, low, angry, and defiant, under her breath when she reads over Ellison’s six word response to her profile. She kicks out under her desk, too, for good measure. _Fuck_. She’d spent twelve hours straight just trying to write it; not even counting the additional six hours it took to transcribe both halves of the interview.

It’s late on Friday night. Karen’s consumed so much coffee in the last two days that her hands shake if she tries to sit still. Her eyes _hurt_ from the light of her computer screen and Mitchell Ellison hates her profile on Frank Castle.  

“ _Fuck_ ,” Karen hisses again, propping her elbows up on her desk and pushes her head into her hands. “ _Fuck_.”

“Everything okay?” Trish asks, low and gentle. Her voice is a smooth alto, perfect for the radio and Karen almost hates the way she wants to turn to the sound of her voice and say _No, nothing is okay_. But she’s not pathetic.

And, she realizes, she was too busy wallowing to hear Trish leave her office. And that she was throwing a fit loud enough to pull Trish away from the story she’s been working on. Shit.

Karen forces herself to turn her head in her hands, sliding her chair forward just enough to force her out of her slumped position. “Yeah,” she breathes. Nods slightly, swallows. Pushes a hand through her hair. “Sorry I’m –”

Trish shakes her head in dismissal. “Don’t worry about it,” she says and walks forward into Karen’s office, her wedges clicking gently against the hardwood. “What are you working on?” Trish asks, stopping at Karen’s desk.

“The Castle profile,” Karen answers, waving her hand at her open email. She leans back in her seat to allow Trish to lean in and read Ellison’s reply.

To Karen’s surprise, Trish doesn’t comment on Ellison’s email. Her face doesn’t give away a single note of her thoughts. Karen doesn’t know how to be grateful to be spared the knowledge; instead she has to snuff out a flicker of irritation, a compulsion to know exactly what her boss is thinking. If Trish is disappointed in her, if she’s thinking Karen was the wrong person to hire on, if…

“You mind if I open this?” Trish asks, pulling Karen out of her thoughts. She gestures to the file attachment with the mouse.

Karen shakes her head. “No,” she replies. “Go ahead.”

She watches the profile – just barely constrained to Ellison’s eight hundred words, what she’d hoped to be a vessel with which to communicate that Frank Castle’s real heroism is exactly what makes him terrifying to people like Ellison. His unflinching ability to talk the things that matter, about violence and war and community. The no-platforming he prides himself on.

Instead, she’d gotten _shit_ , apparently.

Trish’s brow has a gentle furrow to it while she scans the profile. Karen’s stomach chews on itself in the silence. Finally, Trish lets out a hum, bright pink lips pursing just enough to make Karen’s anxiety travel up into her throat.

“Okay,” Trish says, leaning back. She leans against Karen’s desk and crosses her arms. “Here’s what you’re gonna do.”

Karen stares up at her, unable to even allow herself to move.

“First,” Trish begins, raising one finger. “You’re going to close your email. You _need_ to get out of your head for a little bit. I know you’ve got it in there. But you’re too close to it right now. Trees, not the forest, or whatever.” Trish shrugs. Her blue eyes are vivid, somehow teetering the line between commanding and kind. “And after you’ve taken a _break_ , see if you can get some follow up questions out of Frank. Maybe pull the focus back out, big picture stuff.”

Her tone brooks no argument. It’s direction, and Karen’s not sure she has the ability to fight Trish Walker. Not about calling it quits for the night.

She sighs and drops her shoulders in defeat. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

Karen tries to follow Trish’s advice. She does. She shuts down her computer, shoulders her bag and heads back to her apartment. 

Her heels stab a furious cadence against the cracked cement of the sidewalk. She’s pissed at Ellison for being a shit editor who can’t even provide _feedback_ , just – _You know this is shit, right?_ Goddamn him. At herself, for writing shit. At Trish, for not understanding that this article isn’t just words on page, that there is something in Frank Castle that makes this _more_. 

And Karen’s pissed at Frank, too. For fucking with her life by being more than one thing. For the mental triptych Karen has of him: Frank onstage, winding a mic cord around his neck, a vehemence more consuming than fury in his face; Frank in The Safehouse’s kitchen, cheeks puffed and a glint of _mischief_ in his clear, dark eyes, knife between his teeth; Frank’s gaze slipped somewhere else, somewhere beyond Karen and beyond the diner they’re sat in, whispering _But I hear it – I_ hear _it._

(She thinks about his eyes, wants to call them _bright_ , but that’s wrong, isn’t it? Another pebble in her shoe, another word that won’t fucking fit.)

Frank’s voice, her words, Ellison’s email. They all chase her into her apartment.

The broken street lamp in front of her building emits a dull hum. Karen curses under her breath, under the flickering light, and fumbles with her keys. Cycling, cycling over the construction of her profile, again. _What is it, to be a hero?_

Up three flights of stairs, avoiding the chip in the stone on the fifth step of the second flight, still cycling, _Some bloody their fists to keep Hell’s Kitchen safe._

Karen unlocks the deadbolt, opening the door to the stale, heavy air of her apartment. It’s mid-July, and she can’t afford to keep the air conditioning on all day. She sucks in a ragged breath, draws stifling air into her lungs and flicks the lightswitch, thinking: _Because a hero isn’t someone who lives above us, keeping us safe._

Stepping out of her heels by the door. The hardwood is cool on her stockinged-feet, at least. Locks the door. Knob, deadbolt, the two chains she’d installed the night she moved in. Unfolds the chair she keeps by the door and jams it under the knob.

Karen ruminates as she crosses the small space of her studio apartment: _A hero is not a god, an idea, or a country._ She stands over her small window unit air conditioner, her skin prickling with the sharp blast of cool air.

She presses her forehead to the glass of her window and sighs. Breathes in cool air and listens to the rattle of the machine. It nearly drowns out the noise of Hell’s Kitchen, but not quite. The city is inescapable.

Karen cooks herself dinner, methodically chopping vegetables. Each downward motion of her knife marks another pulse of frustration, scolding herself for _still thinking about that goddamn email_. The kitchen cart she had built with her dad the weekend she moved in – a desperate attempt to make counter space in her minuscule kitchenette – shudders with the force of it. Each thud of the blade against the wood of her cutting board sounds like a gunshot.

Everything’s too loud. Karen’s too angry.

She gives up on dinner, abandoning her last ditch attempt to eat her carrots before they go bad; opting instead for the slightly-stale heel of bread in the back of her fridge and a beer. 

The book Karen tries to settle in with, sitting on her made bed, only seems to mock her. She can’t sink into the words, can’t fall into a dog-eared tragedy about a war, a lie, and the people torn wide because of it. She reads the same sentence over and over, her eyes glazing over mid-way through, inevitably slipping back to _You know this is shit, right?_

Her anger twists inward and down, into the center of her ribcage. She can’t sit still. She still has the bottle of Xanax, prescribed after everything by the same doctor who birthed her; who later set her arm after she broke it playing softball when she was seven. It sits in the back of her nightstand drawer, buried under mail she shouldn’t lose. Letters from Sallie Mae and her health insurance, a postcard from her parents she keeps meaning to put on the fridge.

What she should do is take a pill and lie down. Try to sleep.

Karen shuts her book and pushes off her bed. She checks her camera for film and shoves her feet into her heels. The door snaps shut behind her.

 

* * *

 

There’s already a band playing when she arrives at The Safehouse. She can hear them from nearly a full block away. A solid, sonic hum of guitar, drums, and bass. There’s a collection of punks outside the doors; smoking, chatting, laughing. 

Karen slows, just far off enough before they notice her. One guy _–_ stocky and rough-looking, with wild hair _–_ wears a leather jacket, despite the heat. (It’s hot enough Karen hasn’t bothered to bring her cardigan, just her blue and white flowered dress, hoping for a breeze off the Hudson that’s never going to come.) The dude’s _maybe_ five feet tall, if Karen’s being generous, and the back of his jacket reads _WEAPON X_. Street lights reflect off metal spikes lining the shoulders and collar.

A girl even shorter than him laughs at something he’s just said, tossing her head back. It makes the large, geometric earrings she’s wearing jangle. Her dark hair is short-cropped and unruly. When her friend lights her cigarette, Karen notes with a raised eyebrow that she’s wearing bright pink leather driving gloves.

Quentin’s warning from two months ago doesn’t cross her mind. Karen adjusts her aperture and takes the photo. 

After, she tucks her camera safely back into her bag and crosses the street, jay-walking diagonally to slip past the small crowd and into the doors of The Safehouse unseen.

“Hey! Trish’s friend!” Spacker Dave calls over the music, as soon as Karen’s through the doors. She turns her head towards his voice and he gives her a metallic smile. “Welcome back! How’s it going?”

“Uhm,” Karen starts, pulling a hand through her hair, caught off guard by his easy familiarity. “I’m okay, Dave.” She jumps – brain taking a moment to remember how this is supposed to work, exactly – and reaches back into her bag. “ID?” she confirms, fumbling for her wallet.

“ _Spacker_ Dave,” he corrects, mumbling a thanks when she hands him the card. He flashes his blacklight. Karen reaches into her wallet, unsure what the cover is here, but Dave shakes his head. “You’re good,” he assures her, despite Karen’s expression of protest. “Lemme stamp you.”

The stamp is shaped like a banana. And if Dave won’t take her money, she’ll shove the six dollars in the tip jar at the bar.

Still, Karen lingers, suddenly desperate for a familiar face after scanning the crowd – moving fast, flashes of brightly dyed hair, spikes, combat boots and skate shoes. Karen re-shoulders her bag and looks to Dave. “Uh, is Leatherneck playing tonight?”

“Mmn.” Dave’s head is bobbing in time with the band playing. “Just missed ‘em, they were on before Inhumans.” 

Two thoughts occur simultaneously:

 _What the fuck am I_ doing _here?_

 _That means Frank’s still around here somewhere_.  

Karen thanks Dave – again – and makes her way across the space, focusing on keeping her breath steady. She walks up to the bar with as much determination as she can muster, leaning her hands against the repurposed sheet metal bartop, and orders a shot of something dark. The metal is cool against her palms. 

While she’s waiting, a familiar voice calls next to her, “Hey, you got any water you can toss me? Green room’s out.”

The woman working behind the bar straightens. She’s short – maybe a full head shorter than Karen – and wears a thin, ribbed maroon tank top. When she stands, she sets her hands on her hips and arches one bronze eyebrow. Her expression bears no patience or sympathy.

The bar is _loud_ , busy, and the woman behind it has slowed down purely to school the speaker with her expression. Which is why Karen can’t help but follow her pointed gaze over to Micro, who’s leaning up against the bar with a matched, challenging expression – prompting a silent battle of wills communicated via head tilts and eyebrow raises of varying degrees. Their glittery, purple nails drum on the bartop.

“You know where it is,” the woman says, “you want ‘em? Get back here and lend a hand or get it yourself.”

“ _Saraaaah_ ,” Micro whines. They blink, their eyes going wide and pleading behind their glasses. Different ones, Karen realizes, from those they’d worn at practice. Same style, but the almost-see-through plastic has a different tint. Purple, matched to their nails. “C’mon, I’m trying to help Spacker Dave out and Joan’s busy.”   

The bartender – Sarah – scoffs and turns, finally breaking eye contact to pour Karen’s rum. She slides it across the bar and says, half under her breath, “And yet somehow I’m managing just fine on _my_ own.”

“I’ll help,” Karen says, unthinking. Her voice is quiet, but Sarah hears, stopping short.

She frowns at Karen. “Who are you?”

Karen’s just beginning to blush – furious and vibrant, realizing she’s volunteered herself without even meaning to – just as Micro’s eyes land on her.

“Karen!” Micro chirps, their face budding into a wide, dimpled smile when they see her. “Sarah, this is Karen. The reporter.”

Any chance of beating back the heat that had begun to spread across her face vanishes when Sarah’s expression shifts, eyes narrowing. She’s as wary and _sharp_ as the rest of the women Karen’s met in Frank’s domain. Karen feels a train of thought begin to burrow and root around in her mind at the observation.  

“Huh,” Sarah says, nodding slowly. She takes Karen in with guarded eyes. It runs counter to the open delight on Micro’s face – their own round cheeks are a little pink and their eyes are bright; their hair is beginning to break the confines of their bun, shining with sweat. Karen can see where they’ve begun to sweat out dye, a smattering of purple streaks forming down their neck.

“If you want,” Sarah finally concedes with a shrug. She severs her attention, turning back to making drinks. “You can show her the ropes, Micro.”

“Love yoooooou,” Micro shoots back, teasing. Karen looks between them, curious and studying – Sarah’s fond eye roll, Micro blowing a kiss before turning to Karen. “Remember where the kitchen is?” 

She’s pretty sure she does, but the addition of _bodies_ , close packed and moving with the same untamed weight of the ocean makes her second guess herself. But Karen’s volunteered. She swallows her nerves until they sit like a stone just under her diaphragm – chasing them with the remainder of her drink for good measure – and gestures forward. It’ll have to be good enough. “Lead the way.”

Micro flashes her another grin and sets off, weaving just far enough from the thicket of the crowd to keep Karen in step beside them. “Thanks for this, by the way,” Micro says, looking up at her. “You come for the show?”

It might be the hard liquor, combining with the beer she’d chugged to finish before heading out, that makes Karen feel warm and loose enough to reply honestly. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Been struggling with my piece.”

Micro raises an eyebrow. “The piece on Frank?” they ask, tapping Karen’s elbow while they dodge a rogue cluster of the crowd. Their path diverges, swerving towards the merch tables.

Karen nods, pushing a lock of hair back behind her ear. “Uh, yeah,” she admits. “My boss says I’m too close. Not seeing the forest for the trees. Told me to take a break.”

That draws a quick snort and a high-pitched laugh out of them. Their gaze diverts, just for a beat, and they wave to a woman with wide eyes and mousy brown hair behind a merch table. She waves a thin hand back. Micro looks back over to Karen, their mouth tilted up in a smirk. Karen notices, under the lights, that they’ve spread translucent glitter along their cheekbones. “So you came to The Safehouse?” 

Her flush returns, deep. “Uhm.”

Micro laughs again, swaying into Karen as they duck under a cloth – spray painted _DO NOT ENTER, FUCKER!_ with a smiley face underneath for good measure – strung up to separate Dave and Quentin’s living quarters from the venue space.

“No wonder Frank likes you,” Micro says and Karen nearly stops in her tracks. Her heart hammers in her chest – Frank _likes_ her?

It’s a stupid epiphany to have. Because of course he does. _Of fucking course_. He’d agreed to the interview, invited her to see Leatherneck practice. Everything she’d learned about Frank Castle before sitting down with him at Lou’s Diner says _Frank Castle doesn’t do that shit._ (The voice sounds sharply like Ellison.) And everything she’s learned about him since says that Frank appreciates stubborn people; seems to populate his life with them. Stubborn people who are comfortable with the uncomfortable.

She’s an idiot, maybe. 

Micro, luckily, either doesn’t notice her silence or has the grace not to comment on it. “You catch our set?” 

Karen shakes her head, pulling a hand through her hair again as they weave through what she’s assumed is Dave and Quentin’s bedroom. “Uh, no,” she admits, “I thought you’d be playing later.” 

Micro chuckles. “We can share the spotlight,” they reply, mouth lifted up into a smirk. “Most of the time. The Cavalry’s in town, we like ‘em quite a bit, so.”

“Cavalry?” Karen echoes as they duck into the kitchen. Micro beelines for the piles of bottled water next to the fridge. Karen follows.

“Mmhm,” Micro says, passing a case into Karen’s outstretched arms. She adjusts her footing to hold the weight. “Ones playing now. They’re from D.C. All girl punk band – you haven’t heard of ‘em?”

Karen shakes her head as Micro straightens up with their own case of water. Micro’s smile softens into a lopsided grin. “You’re not really… into this, huh?” 

She exhales, an unsteady laugh escaping her chest. Shakes her head again, sheepish. “Not really?” Karen confesses. “Like – I don’t know.” She sighs and Micro just keeps their gaze on her, steady and amiable. “I got a job at _AltPress_ because they were hiring. That kind of music… I never got it.” She shrugs. “But what you guys do… that I get.”

Micro nods, their mouth pursing in an expression so small it’s barely noticeable. “Makes sense.” They shrug and gesture forward with their head. “C’mon.”

They leave the kitchen in silence, but it’s not long after they pass over the threshold that Micro speaks again. “So, what’s wrong with your profile?”

Karen blinks in surprise – it’s the same question she’d been attacking herself with. “Oh! Uhm – “ she chews her lip for a beat, before continuing, “I don’t know. It’s just… shit, I guess.” 

“I doubt it’s that bad.” Micro shrugs, the case of water creaking as they do. Karen scoffs, Ellison’s email already summoned to the forefront of her thoughts again. But Micro rolls their eyes at her, silencing whatever retort is forming on her tongue. “C’mon, I write music, I get being stuck.”

Karen meets their gaze, unsure.

“And,” they add, grinning, “I happen to be a Frank Castle _expert_.” That draws a snort from Karen. It’s cheesy, but just earnest enough to nudge through her defenses. “What’s up with it?” 

She blows out a breath, frowning. “I guess I’m just – I don’t know how to get it all on the page, you know?” Karen admits, thankful for the labyrinth they’ve got to move through to get to the green room – Micro’s leading her down a hallway Karen hasn’t been in before, avoiding the crowd.

Micro’s mouth twists, pouting thoughtfully. It’s almost comical: their unruly hair leaking purple down their neck, purple nails, purple acetate glasses. Like a punk rock Mokey Fraggle. “It’s all the different pieces, right?”

Karen blinks. Opens her mouth once. Snaps it shut. That’s exactly it – Frank Castle’s a puzzle. The pieces are definitely intended to interlock, but her eyes can’t make sense of them, the image yet to emerge in her mind’s eye. “Yeah, actually,” she answers, unconsciously stopping in her tracks.

Micro chuckles, pausing a few feet ahead of Karen when they realize that they’ve fallen out of step with each other. They crack an easy grin. There’s a deep dimple in their left cheek, which disappears behind their shoulder when they shrug. “You probably need more time,” Micro says, simple. “Frank’s not really the type you can pin down in a day – even with invasive journalist shit.”

Karen’s mouth turns down instantly. Something plummets in her chest, each of her conversational missteps with Frank flooding her head: his reaction to when Karen had asked about his playing guitar; about however he’d found punk music. The way his face shuttered.

She whets her lips. Her bag is starting to slip off her shoulder. She’s still holding a case of water. “Did Frank, uh, say something about –”

Micro’s eyes go wide for a beat, registering her line of thought. They shake their head emphatically. “No, no, no,” they reply, sincere. “Frank’s – uh. Not like that. No. I’m, ah, speaking from… personal experience.” 

 _Oh, shit._ Karen hadn’t even thought that Leatherneck’s embargo against press might have something to do with Micro. She’s so _stupid_. She’s a journalist, she should know better. 

Before they were in Leatherneck, they leaked classified information about the Air Force’s drone program. Of course they’d know all about hungry journalists. 

“Right,” Karen breathes, flush rising to the back of her neck. She wants to look away, let her hair fall in her eyes. But she’s still holding the case of water. “I – I forgot, Micro. I should have…”

They laugh again. “Karen, you might be the only person who’s forgotten.” They throw her a smile she doesn’t think she deserves before gesturing to the doorway in front of them. “Green room’s just through here.”

Karen nods, chewing on the inside of her cheek. It’s not as comforting as touching her hair. The fact that she takes conscious note of that is distressing, rooted in a cell of self-loathing that lives somewhere on her spine, between her lungs and her stomach like a cancerous growth.

Micro does some sort of intricate dance with their elbow and foot to get the green room’s door open and Karen follows them in.

Kathy’s dry, sardonic voice greets them. “Shit Chip, took ya long enough,” she says, looking over her shoulder. She’s sitting backwards on a metal folding chair, arms resting over the back. Her eyes lock on Karen. “Legs! Whatcha doin’ here?”

Her voice draws up Rachel’s gaze from where she’s sitting on one end of the couch. She’s perched on the back of it, boots discarded on the floor in front of the couch and her stripey-socked feet resting on the cushion. She’s got her guitar set across her thighs, appears to be re-stringing it. Her gaze is unreadable. 

“Uhm –” every single word Karen knows is stuck in the middle of her throat.

“She’s bringing you water, fucker,” Micro says, continuing into the room. The tinsel on the wall glitters under fluorescent bulbs. Micro leads Karen around Kathy, towards the rack of folding chairs in one corner. They set down their case of water and gesture for Karen to do the same.

Micro tears a bottle free from the packaging and tosses it over towards Kathy. It sails clean over her head and Rachel snatches it out of the air.

Kath’s protest of “No fair!” is lost on Karen, her attention shifting instead to Rachel, who twists open the bottle before passing it over to the figure on the other side of the couch. 

Frank sits on the edge of the cushion, bent over himself, one elbow on each knee. He wears a black hoodie, sleeves pushed up to his elbows. The scar on his forearm seems darker, under the harsh lighting. His head is bowed, concealed by a drawn up hood. Karen tracks his shoulders, his head swaying gently. 

He sits up when Rachel offers him the bottle, eyes still on the floor. They’re unfocused, crooked. His jaw works, a slow rhythm. When he slides back on the cushion, Karen can see he’s not wearing anything under the hoodie, zipped only to mid-chest. It abruptly provides a better view of his tattoo. It’s still obscured some, but it’s not difficult to make out a stylized skull, black and imposing.

She can also see, glinting in the light, what the chain on Frank’s neck holds.

Dog tags and a ring.

There is a single, small, bright diamond on the ring, surrounded by a cluster of smaller stones. It catches all the light in the room when Frank shifts to take a drink, the silver chain sliding against his neck.

A flood of questions pique Karen’s tongue. (Is the ring his mother’s? From what he’d told her, they seemed close. At least – closer than he was with his father. _She loved Pavarotti_ , Karen remembers.)

But then the necklace is gone, slipping back between the fabric of Frank’s hoodie and his bare chest. Micro’s tossing Kathy a bottle of water and another to Rachel. Frank bends back over, water dangling from one hand between his knees. She watches the liquid move inside, sloshing in time with the fluid way his hands – his shoulders, his body – sway. 

She stares a beat too long, realizes that a new conversation has struck up around her; Kathy snickers as Rachel flips her the bird, one red eyebrow arched in judgement. Micro sits down on the floor under Rachel and cackles, back leaning against the bottom half of the couch. They’re twisting open a bottle of water for themselves, head tilted up and back to meet Rachel’s eye.

It’s a postmodern Rockwell tableau: Kathy sitting backwards on a paint-splattered metal chair, just to the right of Frank on the couch, hunched over – though, from Karen’s angle just diagonal to him, she can see the upward tilt of his mouth. The ghost of a grin for whatever crack Kathy’s just made at Rachel’s expense. There’s Rachel herself, next to Frank, perched above the rest of the band like a matriarch. Her calf nearly brushes Frank’s side, and Micro still looks up at her, cherubic cheeks and all.

Karen’s hands ache for her camera but the words stick in her throat. Because she’d thought Leatherneck was a replacement for his unit, she really had. But looking at them here, she thinks _family_.

It makes the ache that lives in the calcium in her sternum hum. Her hands fight not to shake with the compulsion to document this – version of a family. The urge is so strong, she wraps one hand around the strap of her bag to keep a tremor in check.

She swallows the question, _can I photograph you?_  

Instead, she clears her throat and says, “I better get going –”

Frank’s head tilts up at the sound of her voice. Karen’s words die in her throat.

He looks at her with eyes like a soothed fever. His posture is loose, face laid open, heavy angles of his features slackening into more forgiving curves and all at once it makes him look younger.

What skin Karen can see is flushed, vivid under the bright overhead lights of the green room. There are high points of color on his cheeks. The flush extends down his throat and chest, gathering just under the dip where his clavicles meet before being lost to the ink of his chestpiece. Frank’s blown pupils conspire with dark brown irises to make his gaze seem pitch black, almost doll-like, beneath his heavy brow. The line of his mouth is soft, lips slightly parted. His eyelashes are moist with sweat.

Karen feels a warm, fizzing sensation in her stomach work its way up high in her chest.

“Hey, hey,” Micro says, as Frank and Karen look at each other. Micro’s own gaze redirects to Karen too, a tiny fold in their brow. “Nuh-uh,” they insist. “You should stay, grab a water. Y’know, work on your piece.”

Kathy wheels on her, plastic bottle crinkling as she finishes chugging her water. She raises one pointy eyebrow. “You ain’t done with that yet?” 

Karen swallows, buying herself time. Her eyes dart to Kathy for a moment before instinctively snapping back to Frank.

When he tilts his head his hood slips back – the already dark stubble of his buzzcut is darker with sweat, still drying on Frank’s skin. He’s blinking at her, slow, almost drowsy. Except his eyes are _so clear,_ just shy of wide. Watchful yet unguarded, apparently unconcerned with the fact that Karen is staring right back at him. She gets the faint, unsettled impression that he doesn’t even recognize her.

She might think he was stoned, if it were anyone else. He looks wrung out, and… not happy, exactly. Content. Steady. Karen realizes with a start that he’s stopped swaying entirely. The line of his shoulders is utterly still; there’s no tic in his jaw, no shake in his hands.

“Uh, no,” Karen answers. “Still working on it.” Frank’s expression is starting to tighten, eyes narrowing and flicking up and down Karen’s frame. There’s a sense of an inner machinery kicking on, gears clicking into place. She feels herself flush harder under that look.

“Huh.” Kathy pauses, her jaw working. She notes Karen’s bag, and the camera strap she sees peeking out of it. Her gaze, dark and direct, returns to Karen’s. “Well if you’re gonna be around, make yourself useful and grab me another water, will ya?”

Karen’s trapped in it now. If she says no, then Kathy’s likely to get pissy. Which is equally possible if she stays, but Kathy’s temper could at least be postponed by acquiescence. It’s not ideal; but neither is going home to stew over Ellison’s email or how she can’t seem to take Trish’s advice and just _stay home_ , finish the six pack in her fridge. 

Karen sucks her lips in over her teeth and nods slowly. “Okay,” she mumbles, stooping down to pull two waters from the open case. She walks the handful of paces over to where Leatherneck sits. Takes to the space opposite Kathy, near Micro. Karen passes Kathy one of the waters before carefully folding herself onto the floor, too nervous to take a chair. She smoothes her hand over the skirt of her dress.

The conversation shifts again, seamlessly flowing back into Kathy and Rachel discussing the set – something about strings, which Karen weighs against the fact that Rachel’s re-stringing two strings on the neck of her guitar just a few feet away. They’re debating the merits of grades of steel.

Again, Karen finds herself struggling to wrap her head around just how professional Leatherneck is, despite Kathy’s joke cracking and the fact that Karen can see, now, that there’s blood drying over the inked script on Frank’s knuckles. 

She pulls her notebook out instead of her camera, fighting every urge and instinct all the while.

As soon as she does, though, Kathy’s quick to notice. “You ever take a break, Legs?” she asks, colorful tattoos flexing with her forearms, braced against the back of the chair she’s straddling.

Karen looks up. “Do you?” she asks in reply, genuinely curious. 

It draws a sound out of Frank. Karen’s attention zeroes in, expecting a sentence after the huff. His mouth is tilted up in a slight smirk. His expression is still somewhat unfocused – more narrowed than it had been when she first sat down, but there’s still a part of him that’s not _here_. He hasn’t put her through the grunts-only routine since that day at The Chaste. But the words never come.

“Reporter’s got a point there, Kath,” Rachel says to Karen’s surprise. She fights to keep it off her face. Rachel’s gray eyes flash like flint, turned up in a minuscule gesture of amusement. When Karen turns her attention to her, she’s eye level with a tattoo inked into the side of Rachel’s calf. It’s simple: one solid black line, with a few places in the linework where the ink’s fallen out or worn thin. An abstracted skull, long in the teeth.

Micro snickers. Kathy makes a face and flips them off.

Karen looks away from all of them, drops her attention to her notebook, jots a few notes about the band’s post-set demeanor. In the handful of moments it takes for Leatherneck’s conversation to switch gears again, Karen’s sunken back. Her hands sketch against the cramped page of her notebook, of their own accord. Frank Castle’s hooded figure begins to take shape. Dark shadows pull in the material of his hoodie; his nose becomes a series of sketchy, soft lines, hard to map on the page. 

Frank’s eyes are hidden from her, but she registers him grunt and snicker at different spots in the conversation, hard to track; like he’s half in this moment and half in another.

She doesn’t know how long she’s lost track of time for; all she knows is that she’s pulled out of it by Micro sitting next to her, saying – quietly, but clear enough for Karen to hear, “Hey, that’s pretty good.”

Karen jumps, heat rising up her neck and over her cheeks. “Oh!” Her hand covers the sketch immediately. She combs a hand through her hair and looks towards Micro and then quickly away. “It’s – nothing, I’m –”

Karen glances around the room, the hair on the back of her neck raised in panic, in the sickly feeling of being _watched_.

What she sees, however, is: Leatherneck, in the same seats as before, joined now by a handful of newcomers and familiar faces. Quentin is leaning against the wall, sardonic as ever, deep in conversation with Kathy. Their distinct voices are clear – Quentin’s nasal and Kathy’s laced with a slight rasp. Rachel chats with the woman from the merch table, the one Micro had waved to. Her eyes are large, almost owlish, matched in color to the brown hair that slides into her face when she leans forward to talk. Karen can see her mouth moving, but can’t hear her speak.

Frank himself is leaned forward too, hood pushed back a little, one ear poking out from behind it. His eyes are focused on Quentin and Kathy, but he doesn’t add to their conversation.

“It’s okay,” Micro says, easy, offering Karen a smile. They even lift a finger to their mouth in emphasis. Then, lowering the finger with a smirk, they add, “I only tell government secrets.”

It’s enough to pull a soft laugh from Karen’s chest. But the joke nudges a question loose anyway. “You know,” she starts, laughter ushered away by a more serious expression. She can feel her brow knitting together as the question percolates into words. “You’ve got a pretty good sense of humor about that.”

Micro raises an eyebrow. “What, about posting military secrets online?” Their overly casual tone juxtaposes sharply with the high drama of what they’re describing. Karen swallows another huff of laughter. 

“Uh, yeah,” Karen says, nodding. She leans forward a little, brow knitting together. When she continues, she finds herself speaking in little more than a whisper, “I mean… some of what you shared. Couldn’t you be charged with war crimes?” 

They shrug. “That’d mean someone was holding us responsible.” There’s something wry in their smile; a thin brittleness that appears with the words. Another shrug and it’s gone.

She pushes. “Was that the end goal then?”

“There’s, uh, this…” Micro’s thick, dark eyebrows knit together. “Concept, in Judaism, called _tikkun olam_ – which is Hebrew for ‘world repair’, right? So _tikkun olam_ proposes that the world is broken and that it’s _our_ job –” Micro gestures around the room, to Karen, to Rachel and Kathy, to Quentin, to Frank – “to pick up the pieces and fix it.”

Their words are quiet and serious; any hint of the funny, warm, almost _cherubic_ persona Karen’s seen from them so far is gone. Micro’s knees come up to their chest. “I saw the pieces of a person, you know? A person I don’t know was guilty of anything. And the sensor I was working with was laughing.” They shake their head, loose topknot wobbling. “So I don’t know what the end goal was. Just that I had to start to pick up those pieces.” 

When Karen draws in a breath, it’s wet-sounding, thankfully enveloped in Kathy’s dry cackle – she’s tossing her head back at something someone said when Karen wasn’t listening. Karen’s fingers fly to her mouth anyway, trying to pull the sound back inside her.

She wants to ask if that’s what all this is too, then. If the band, The Safehouse, all of it – is _tikkun olam_. But it’s a stupid question and Karen’s not in the business of stupid questions. 

(Her gaze slides over to Frank of its own volition. Hears his voice, soft and just a little harsh, _All this? It’s just about figuring out what to do when the gunfire stops_.

There’s a twitch in his face after Kathy’s laugh, an upturn of his mouth so sharp, so acuminous, that Karen’s breath does something funny when she sees a deep dimple appear in Frank’s profile. It hollows in his cheek, putting a bruised cheekbone into sharp relief, revealing the infrastructure of his bones, cheek and jaw. She looks back to Micro.)

Their gaze is steady, watching Karen with a curious quirk to their brow. It’s not the same thousand-yard fold of scrutiny that Frank gives her; but the expression is similar enough to give her deja-vu. It’s eerie, the intense study seeming counter to their youthful features. Whereas on Frank, the look is weathered, natural.

She’s aware, suddenly, of the long lull in the conversation. That she’s been too quiet. Shit. Karen forces herself to swallow, nodding as she does. “Uh, Frank – he kinda said the same thing about the band.”

Christ, it’s a weak reply. She tries to ignore the heat in her ears.

Yet it unleashes a crackling peal of laughter from Micro. “Yeah, I doubt that,” they reply, mischief worming its way back into their smile. “But I think I get what you mean.” 

It’s only a few more moments of silence – heavy and awkward on Karen’s part, her pen tapping on the edge of her notebook while she chews the inside of her lip, altogether too aware of her drawing spread out across the page – before the music on the other side of the walls comes to a rumbling stop. Karen can hear the shouting of the crowd, muffled thank yous from the band. The night at The Safehouse is ending rapidly and Karen feels none the wiser about Leatherneck, Frank, nor her piece for Ellison.

Spacker Dave’s head appears in the green room’s doorway not long after, piercings knocking together, glinting in the light. “Hey dudes, can I get a hand with breaking this shit down?”

All of Leatherneck begins to push up from their respective perches.

Rachel carefully leans her guitar against the couch and twists around Micro to stand. Kathy untangles herself from her chair while Quentin kicks off from his own spot against the wall. Frank’s forearms flash, Karen noticing that one of the scars marking the length of one arm has a twin in the muscle on the other side: a puncture wound, angry and dark on his skin.

“Hey,” Micro says, leaning over. “I should help Spacker out, but let me get your number. We can, y’know, chew the fat later or something.” There’s a hopeful tilt to their mouth, a brightness in their eyes that Karen struggles to process.

It’s friendship. Karen reaches out for it like a lifeline.

“Sure, yeah, of course,” she starts, aware of the breathlessness in her voice, the fluster. She pushes past it, reaching for her phone so Micro can put their number in – 

Micro interrupts her. “Actually, uh, gimme your notebook,” they say, gesturing with one hand. “I gotta write it down.” When their arm flexes, Karen can see a tattoo on the inside of their forearm. A skull, long in the teeth. Simple linework. Like Rachel’s. Karen looks up, raising an eyebrow. Micro continues, explaining, “Shabbat. I don’t really… observe a lot of shit, you know? But I try, to, so –” they shrug. “I don’t do technology for Shabbat. Seems like a fair compromise, right?” 

Karen nods, eyes a bit wide. She feels a little schooled and a lot presumptuous.

It’s only after this sheepish reminder from Micro that Karen recalls an abstract, vague memory from ninth grade world history, about Judaism; that on the Shabbat, Jewish people do not do any physical labor. But the memory is gossamer and she can’t be sure if it’s truth or just a truth-shaped notion in her head. 

Small-town New England episcopalianism has colored every part of her understanding of the world. Whether it’s to stand in somewhat reactionary disregard of it on Sunday mornings, or to negotiate the urge to mumble a half-hearted prayer to St. Anthony when she’s lost something. Despite her efforts, she still locks on Christianity as the default.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Karen breathes in reply, face flushed as she tugs a sheet of paper free from her notebook. She tears it in half, reminded suddenly of grade school; before she had a cellphone, before _texting_ or Facebook or anything else. Swapping phone numbers on dolphin notebook paper.

She pulls a second pen from her bag for Micro. They trade scraps of paper.

“Rad.” Micro grins, tucking her number into the breast pocket of their shirt –  a short-sleeved button down, pink floral print on a light blue field of linen – and pushing up off the floor. They extend a hand to Karen, too. She takes it. Micro’s hands are calloused, warm. Surprisingly strong when they help Karen up. “Thanks for helping out tonight, by the way.”

She shrugs it off. “It was nothing, really.” And it was – she didn’t have anything else to do, didn’t even know why she was _at_ The Safehouse (hell, Karen still isn’t entirely sure on that score), helping out at least gave her something to do. “Not a big deal,” Karen insists.

“Sure it was,” Micro returns, giving Karen an easy shrug and dropping her hand. “See you around soon?”

Karen nods. “You bet.” She finds she means it.

Before Micro leaves her, they stop at the doorway and meet her eyes. “I meant what I said earlier,” they add. Their eyes are blue, illuminated and sincere behind their purple lenses. “You should work out some follow-up with Frank. He’s like a chickenpox shot. You need a booster.”

Karen’s lips twitch at the joke. She supposes he kind of is. What Frank has to say is important  – vital, even, Karen’s beginning to think – but it hurts going down. “Okay,” she replies quietly, nodding.

Micro nods back before making their final exit. “See you around, Karen!” they call down the hallway. 

She takes a moment before following them out, but doesn’t entirely trust herself to make it back through the maze of The Safehouse’s network of back rooms without a set of footsteps to follow. Micro’s phone number is securely tucked away in her notebook, rubber-banded shut, hiding any evidence of her sketching. Karen shoves it into her bag as she walks, steeling herself before stepping out into the venue proper. 

It’s nearly empty, which is a surprise – she hadn’t realized she’d been with Leatherneck for so long that the night was ending on the other side of the building. Scanning the lingering crowd, she sees Micro and Sarah behind the bar; Sarah rolling her eyes, Micro laughing. Quentin and Kathy are onstage, cleaning up and breaking down equipment while Dave and Rachel count out money from four lockboxes atop his card table. The slight woman Rachel had been speaking with has returned to the merch table, folding t-shirts into boxes, keeping her eyes down.

No Frank.

 _Shit_. That means she has to dig his number out of her phone’s caller ID. It means she has to _call him._ Karen worries the tip of her tongue between her teeth, stalking out of The Safehouse, all at once aware of how out of place she is here without someone to authenticate her presence. No Trish, no Micro, _no Frank._

She needs to go home; back where she belongs.

When she sucks in her first breath of fresh air – pushing open the large front door to The Safehouse after an enthusiastic _Night, Karen!_ from Spacker Dave – she nearly bowls over. Hours in the green room had acclimated her to the stuffy, stale air inside the building. Now, in the early Saturday morning dark, Hell’s Kitchen is _hot_. But the breeze off the river isn’t particularly humid, and after being inside The Safehouse, it feels like it could have blown in right off the Atlantic itself. 

Her second breath is less pleasant, laced with the bitter reek of menthol cigarettes.

Frank Castle materializes to her right, taking two slow steps towards Karen. Lurch to his gait. One footfall heavier than the other. The sound’s accentuated by his boots, thudding against concrete. He’s still just wearing the hoodie; zipped halfway, one large ear still peeking out from under the hood.

“You an’ Lieberman finished coloring?” he asks, low and rough. He exhales smoke, lowering his cigarette as he walks forward. His face is open, expressive. There’s an easy tilt to his mouth that spreads to his eyes, slightly narrowed in a smile. Karen notes a thin cut scabbing over one eye.

Her brain starts and stalls at the jab, panicked heat touching her cheeks. He knows, fuck, of _course_ Frank Castle knows that she was drawing him, god, shit, _fuck_. Karen opens her mouth to snap something, anything – 

But then she catches herself, looking Frank over instead. She can see his brain recalibrating. He’s closer to her, now, than he was in the green room, and she’s getting the impression that this is a slow return to earth for him. Certain details sharpen themselves with the closed distance: his steadier-than-normal hands, the faintly languid movement of his arms. The ease in his face, which is just beginning to shift into something like confusion with a twinge of frustration, maybe, at the remnants of Karen’s defensiveness.

Karen’s memory funnels Frank’s voice into her ear: _I am not your enemy._

There’s no way he could have seen what she was drawing. Her notebook is too small, and he was too far away. Looking at the floor all night, mostly, hood drawn up. 

Karen breathes out.

“Next time I’ll bring markers,” she returns, the barb sliding off her tongue with surprising ease now that her hackles are down. “Set up a table.”

Frank’s eyebrow twitches at her words. He lifts his cigarette back to his lips. Takes a drag.

Emboldened in a way Karen hasn’t felt for at least a year, she continues, “Maybe we’ll even doodle your beat-up mug.”

Frank huffs at that, tendrils of gray smoke rolling from his nostrils as he does. He rolls his dark eyes, still narrowed in amusement, pupils contracted back to something like normal. “Attagirl,” he murmurs, so quiet Karen almost doesn’t hear.

She pulls her lips over her teeth, worrying the bottom with her incisors. It brings up a fair point; the two weights in her bag: the drawing and her camera. Karen’s gaze drops to her heels on the cracked sidewalk, letting her hair fall into her eyes. “Actually,” she starts, combing it back with her fingers. “You know, I uh, need some photos for my article?” It’s not supposed to be a question. _Damnit_.

Her head is still bowed, just enough that she has to look up to meet Frank’s eyes. “Think we could set something up?”

He grunts. Lowers his cigarette and exhales, careful this time to keep the smoke from blowing in her face. “Got a show I’m working tomorrow,” he says. “Could do Sunday afternoon, got some shit I gotta take care of in the morning.”

“Oh!” Karen breathes, flustered. She hadn’t realized he’d aim to meet up with her immediately. She’d thought they’d – agree to talk to each other about it. Later. That he’d call her, or email, or text, or –

Then she remembers Micro’s comment. He uses a flip-phone. Remembers Frank saying _the computers_. So, no. He’s not going to email her; not going to text her. And yeah, of course he’s going to plan it right now.

He’s Frank, and Karen is starting to learn that _Front Toward Enemy_ is more than an album name, or a weaponry reference. It’s a mode of operation.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” she says, pulling her phone out and thumbing open her calendar app. She’s not busy on Sunday anyway. Or any other day this week. “When?”

“Could do around two.” Frank says, the cherry of his cigarette flaring just before he pulls it from his lips again. His exhales and inhales are slow when he smokes. Measured. Timed with the beat his finger worries the filter to. “You got a place in mind?”

She doesn’t, and combs her brain for a spot. Tries to visualize the layout of Vice’s webpage; what Frank’s face should look like on it. Comes up entirely fucking blank.

“We could meet here?” she says, scrambling to fill dead air. “Figure it out from there?” She swallows. “Since it’ll depend on the weather and all.” Frank’s brow furrows. “The, uh, light. And stuff.”

Frank grunts and nods, once. “Sounds like a party.”

Karen snorts, rolls her eyes before she can help it. “I try.” She smiles without meaning to, noting the absence of tension more than anything. No weight in her cheeks, her jaw. Even under Frank’s gaze, her face feels light. It’s a new sensation. She’d like to hold onto it.

“Take care,” she breathes, parroting his own words unconsciously.

He blinks, then says it back, low.

Karen walks home and breathes in the city air; for the first time, she doesn’t find the scent of oil and concrete oppressive.

 

* * *

 

There’s a bench outside The Safehouse. If someone were to look closely at it, they’d notice it’s missing the big screws that secure it into the cement. That’s because it’s not supposed to be there. It appeared about six months after Spacker Dave and Quentin opened up the warehouse as a venue space, and approximately four months after Logan had begun to complain that there wasn’t anywhere to sit and smoke a cigar or seven outside. 

Folks have come looking for it since; but somehow it always returns. Kinda like Logan himself.

It’s there that Frank finds Karen on Sunday afternoon. Her hair’s up, pulled into something messy and loose; thin wisps of strawberry blonde frame her face, graze her nape. It’s hot out. He’s sure that’s why she’s done it. But the heat doesn’t bother him much; it’s no Iraq. No wandering New York City in the ass-end of summer with no shelter but what you got on your back, either. Days on end hauling all the shit you own from alley, to soup line, to alley again. Days when Hell’s Kitchen lived up to its name, heat bearing down through layers of fabric like a solid weight.

Today, Frank’s jacket left unzipped marks the extent to which he’s willing to capitulate to the weather.

Truthfully, he feels vaguely scraped out; always does, after bringing a foster back to Kate. Frank supposes it’s best luck, that a good couple stepped up to take Melville ( _Mel_ , Kate called him) before the tour Leatherneck’s got lined up next month, but. The quiet in his apartment after a foster leaves never sits right. A quiet that crowds his ears.

It’s good that he’s meeting up with Karen. New objective. Keeps him busy.

She’s reading, when he sees her. Swan’s neck exposed; bag resting on the bench beside her, the strap still slung across her body. Wearing a simple black dress. Cotton, he’d guess. The scoop collar showcases the moles on her throat, her clavicles. He can’t make out the book cover yet, only that it’s a small mass market paperback.

Frank keeps his hands in the front pockets of his jeans as he walks up, stopping two steps to her left. “Karen,” he says by way of greeting, keeping his voice down. Her bag sits stiffly upright on the bench, packed full. She’s locked and loaded, then.

She looks up. Eyes big and blue, bigger and bluer than Micro’s (Frank’s brow creases at that, digesting the fact that apparently Lieberman is his point of reference for blue eyes everywhere), popping open wide at Frank’s arrival. They remind Frank of a deer’s eyes, flashing; spotted on late nights from the passenger seat of the van as Rachel speeds silently up the turnpike.

“Oh!” Karen breathes. Frank could laugh, but doesn’t. She almost always sounds surprised. Jumpy. Frank’s familiar. Pink spreads across her cheekbones – not as strong as it has been, but present. A hair-trigger flush that’s as much a feature of her face as her eyes, her Grecian nose. “Hey.”

She closes her book. Frank still can’t make out the cover, her hand spread across it.

Frank slides his gaze back to her face, noting the tiny tilt to one corner of her mouth. “Hey,” he replies.

He thinks of her, the night before last. Curled up on the floor with her notebook. How, for a girl as edgy as she is, Karen has a surprising tendency to lose track of time; to fall into a task hard enough that she forgets to keep tabs on her surroundings. How she’d jolted when Lieberman’d planted themself beside her.

Frank nods a question at the unoccupied space of the bench.

“Yeah, uh,” she laughs a little breathlessly, self deprecating, and gestures at the spot. “Take a seat.”

The bench creaks with the redistribution of weight as he does, the sound reaching through the ever-present buzz and clamor of the city; the dull roar of traffic, voices of passersby. Frank’s adept at drowning it out. Karen watches him as he sits, with unblinking eyes.

“Any good?” he asks, not looking at her as he indicates the book still hidden under Karen’s hand with a jerk of his shoulder.

Her forehead folds gently, before smoothing out when she follows his line of sight, flush spreading to her ears when she realizes what he’s asking about. “Uh, I don’t know,” she answers, half-laughing. “Can’t quite seem to get into it.” She taps the cover. _Atonement_.

“Somethin’ else on your mind?” If there’s one thing Frank’s learned about this girl over the past week, it’s that she’s got a knack for hyperfocusing. The word _possessed_ comes to mind. Frank hopes she’d take that as a compliment.

The crease returns to her brow, reaching down and curling her mouth into a considerate frown. Her eyes move from the book up to Frank’s face. He shifts his weight, tapping at his right knee with two fingers. “Maybe,” Karen replies. Her nostrils flare slightly as she exhales. She looks down at her lap for a beat.

When she looks back up, her eyes spark with curiosity. Eyes like a midwestern sky, only bluer, Frank thinks. He registers the expression as the one she wears just before she lobs a question at him. He’s learning, piece by piece, to navigate the subtle shifts in the topography of her face. To brace himself during her next inhale, knowing she’ll turn the conversation back on him.

“Do you read a lot?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. She tilts her head, a fraction of an inch.

Frank shrugs. “Some.”

He pauses, then. Thinks about the small shelf of books he’s got at his place. The library card he hasn’t renewed since he got back – it’s the old design, old enough that younger librarians at his local branch joke about it being _vintage_. He shifts his weight on the bench and looks back over to Karen, his gaze having slipped to the street. “Not as much as I used to, ‘fore moving to New York.”

She’s pulled out that notebook. Snaps open the band wrapped around it. Clicks her pen. Her head’s bowed, making a note. There’s a few strands of hair that’ve fallen from behind her ear, but she doesn’t reach for them. Only looks back over to Frank, before speaking. “When did you move to the city?”

Landmine question. Police’d say he “moved” here the first time they arrested him for sleeping where he wasn’t supposed to. No one to post bail meant a couple nights in lock-up. No sleep for three days. Reeked of piss more’n the streets did. _Can’t have people living in the park, Mr. Castle._

Curt’d tell him it was when he got a permanent address.

“‘Bout a year after I got outta rehab,” he says, finally.

The look on Karen’s face tells Frank his own expression’s gone cold. Her eyes are saucer-wide and she’s nodding, slowly, thumb working over the page of her notebook. “Okay,” she murmurs.

Frank swallows. He doesn’t want – doesn’t want to make shit difficult. He’d heard her, talking to Lieberman. She’s having a hard time with the story. Shit, he’s got a hard goddamn time following the thread himself, most days.

“Mom was a reader,” he says, hauling the memory up from the back of his skull with both hands. Her bookcases in the living room. Her pride and joy – she _loved_ her books. Frank’s dad’d given her a lot of old ones; heavy, ornate volumes that had been around longer than Mario and Louisa’d been married.

But his mom would pick up any book. Trashy paperbacks. Antique, leather-bound literature. Fucking textbooks. Frank can remember summer days, walking from one neighborhood yard sale to another, filling the red flyer wagon he’d gotten as a toddler with every ten cent paperback or reference book set or essay collection or biography or any other goddamn written _thing_ Louisa could find.

Karen hones in on his words, watching him carefully. Encouraging him with silence. Frank forces himself to continue. “Yeah,” he breathes, shoulders swaying. “Loved a good book. Shit,” Frank adds, with a small laugh, “she’d read the goddamn manual for a washing machine we didn’t own.”

The corners of Karen’s mouth tug up, demeanor warming. Frank doesn’t think she’s aware of it. He shifts his weight again, presses his boots into concrete.

“An’ she’d remember it all, you know?” he goes on, speaking low. Leans forward, nudging Karen farther back in his peripheral vision. “Woman’s mind was a steel trap. Give her a page number, she’d snap her fingers and fucking quote it.” His own memory – his mother’s dark eyebrows pinched with momentary concentration, before shooting up in triumph, information ready on her tongue – rockets forward fully formed, and Frank falls into it. Headlong. “Good at explaining shit, too. Homework. Laid out what I was supposed to remember for catechism better’n the nuns did.”

“You’re Catholic?” Karen asks, pulling Frank out of his head. It stops his thoughts in their tracks. He looks at her for a beat, confused by the question. Forgets, for a second, that she doesn’t _know_ that, doesn’t know him; didn’t know him before.

He grunts, leans back and shifts so his center of gravity’s angled away from her. “Used to be,” Frank answers. Eyes trained on a half-faded patch of graffiti under his feet. “Ain’t ever been an un-Confirmed Castiglione.”

“Castiglione?” Karen echoes, after a beat. Frank looks up again. Now she’s confused. Her pen is paused on the page, mid-sentence.

He grunts an affirmative. “Uh, yeah. Castle, in Italian. Shit doesn’t fit on a dog tag, I guess.”

“Oh,” Karen breathes. Her voice is very soft, and her eyes are very wide. Sympathy writ across her face like a banner. The moles in her neck jump as she breathes. Silence stretches between them.

 _Fuck_.

She seems to have the same thought, chewing on her lip, making it redder. The tip of her pen scratches at the page, writing nothing. Karen tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and the veins in her throat jump as she swallows.

Frank wants a cigarette.

He circles back, tries to extract himself from the guilty weight of the silence. Offer her up some other useless scrap of memory – never mind that it’s all starting to feel like a consolation prize.

“Yeah,” he breathes, leaning forward again. Forearms braced on his knees. “She loved it, too. Church.” His swaying’s a little more pronounced, inflection tilting down on the last word.

“She loved Pavarotti,” Karen murmurs. Frank tilts his head, looking up at her, almost over his shoulder. He blinks, caught off guard.

When Karen meets his eyes, his lips twitch upward. Then he lets his gaze roam, back over to the street corner opposite them. Then to Karen once more. She’s intent on him. “You got it,” Frank mumbles, nodding. “So there was a –”

His mouth doesn’t make the shape. The sentence slips away, out of his grasp like fucking sand between his fingers. Karen’s got those sharp, bright, _bright_ blue eyes trained on him and it looks like she’s biting the inside of her lip and for a long, pensile moment, Frank has to concentrate on keeping his hands exactly where they are.

 _Don’t_ raise them up. _Don’t_ dig knuckles into the soft part of his temple until the word, the _fucking_ word, unearths itself. _Don’t_ knock the heel of his palm into the side of his skull and see what shakes loose.

The irony that this is happening when he’s trying to talk _literature_ does not escape him.

“Frank?”

The blank space in his head buzzes.

“It’s. I started…I was nine, ten, maybe. And –”

Words start piling up, offering themselves to his tongue. But they’re not the right shape, they’re not what he _means_ and she’s still staring, breeze sweeping a lock of strawberry blonde across her eyes. She looks away when she combs it back and Frank thinks, _good. Don’t watch._ Like a goddamn kid at a chalkboard, trying to mark the errors in a sentence and failing, feeling eyes on his spine.

He changes the approach. Or tries to, circling the meaning in his brain, seeking out the weak spot. The entry point where he can push inside and take back control.

“I guess what did it was, uh,” Frank tries again. Fails again. He shifts in his seat, pushes his hands into his pockets. They’re fisted, tight enough that it should hurt. The pain doesn’t register.

Concern marks every corner of Karen’s face. Large, earnest eyes bore into him. “Frank, are you –”

“I was nine or ten. My mom signed me up for this…summer class. It was.” He knows by her expression that he’s gotta be telegraphing some bad shit. She’s utterly still beside him, one leg elegantly draped over the other, crossed at the knee.

Frank pushes his fist against his hip bone through his clothes until it aches and gives it another shot. But his voice comes out shredded, and he stops, clears his throat, starts again, “There was this class, and.”

It’s not happening. Before he can lock it down, he barks, “ _Fuck_.” The twinge of contrition Frank feels when Karen flinches with her whole body is quickly lost to the stream of static dividing his thoughts in half.

Karen sighs. Or maybe just breathes. Maybe he’s imagining the annoyed, expectant note in her exhale. Maybe he’s imagining a lot of things, like why this was a good idea in the first place.

“Frank, if you don’t –” Karen starts.

“Y’know what?” He’s springing up from the bench, talking before he can shut himself up. Before he can chew the words into his cheek where they’ll be no one’s problem but his own. His trick knee pops with the force of his ascent. “Just leave my ass in the wind, if that’s what you’re gonna do, just do it, for _Christ’s_ sake.”

It all comes out in a hot, irrational rush. A quick bleed. Nothing to be done. And isn’t that always the worst part.

He’d been on her ass about her defensive bullshit not a fucking week ago. Narrowed blue eyes, stomping her heel into the ground. That angry flush gathering in her cheeks at the drop of a fucking hat. And here’s his dumb ass, putting everything he has into not bringing his fists crashing down on something, _anything_ – the bench, the trash can a few feet away, his own goddamn head full of decommissioned ordnance and bad wiring.

Karen hasn’t moved from her seat. Frozen. Big blue eyes. Makes her look young.

Christ, he’s an asshole. He pulls his eyes away from her. Every muscle seems to twist inward, shame like a solid ball of heat in his gut. Embarrassment, too. Because he’s thirty-fucking-three years old and can’t remember words he learned in elementary school. Words he notes the _absence_ of; can feel the fucking hole in his head where they all fell out.

“Just –” _Just forget it_ , he means to say, but she interrupts him.

“Hey,” she barks. Frank’s focus snaps to her and stays there. A switch has flipped. Her eyes flash before narrowing again, mouth tightening into a straight line. “Don’t do that. Don’t just give up on this. Tell me what’s going on, Frank.” She’s so goddamn sure of herself, all of a sudden, talking like he owes her an answer. Voice gone huskier than he’s heard from her.

It’s enough of a jolt to his system to make him pause. She’s staring up at him, eyes blazing, and Frank forces himself to breathe. In through the nose, like he’s been taught. Out through the mouth. His breath rattles against clenched teeth.

Hands fisted in the pockets of his hoodie, knuckles pressed into his hip bones, he ignores the phantom sensation of sand in his ears and blinks his vision clear, still looking at her.

“It’s –” he swallows, dry. Fragmented sentences scrape his throat on their way out. Cracked, worse than when he’s blown out his voice halfway through a tour. “Words. They go…” Another breath. His gaze darts back and forth for a second, between her and the floral print curtain billowing out of a window in the building over her shoulder. “They go in and out.”

“Okay,” Karen says, after a pause. Her voice is – gentle. The corners of her eyes are tight. She’s worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “Help me understand, then.”

Frank grinds his molars together, hard. The creak is a humvee door, then a Mustang, Maria behind the wheel –

Frank punches himself in the hip, then. Doesn’t mean to. It just happens. It knocks him out of the memory and Karen’s still looking up at him, resolute expression unchanged.

When he opens his mouth to speak, his gaze flicks to her notebook. “I…” If it were Micro; if it were Rachel; if it were Kathy – they’d give him the notebook without a word. They know the maneuvers. Now he’s gotta ask. “Writing helps.”

Karen blinks once, face melting into a familiar consternation, before her eyebrows jump up. She mouths an _oh_ that she covers quickly with a movement of her hand, pushing back a free lock of hair that’s tumbled down from her loose bun. “Right,” Karen breathes, and Frank watches the pink rush her cheeks. “You mentioned – the lists.”

She remembers. He grunts in soft surprise as Karen offers up the notebook to him, flipped to a clean page. Her pen’s a bit chewed on the end – for whatever reason, it’s that detail which grounds him. He latches onto it: a vision of her frowning at her notes, pen between her teeth.

Frank exhales, breath coarse, and withdraws his hands from his pockets. There’s a tremor in them as he takes the notebook. He bites down on the inside of his bottom lip and forces his fingers to grip the pen, hold it steady enough. He doesn’t look at Karen. Can’t.

He doesn’t sit, either, opting to brace the notebook against his inner forearm; fingers clamped on the bent spine at the top. Keeps his head down.

(Lady in green scrubs says _Can you draw the word?_ Frank wants to throw the fucking pencil they give him – loose grip, weak, like he’s in the first fucking grade – right between her eyes.)

A breeze touches the back of his neck, and he scratches a circle onto the page. Another circle. A mouth. Two semi-circles intersecting the big one. Pen drags on paper – ballpoint, shitty. Bleeding ink when he presses too hard, which is all the time. Eyes, big black dots. Jagged dark vertical lines breaking up the shapes. Frank can remember what it’s _supposed_ to look like – shadowed, horrible, staring up at him from the cover of the book.

He takes a deep breath. Fucking stupid. Can’t remember the word, still. But – the shape of it. He writes _POM_. Letter’s too big, cockeyed. He wants to write _FUCK_ , but doesn’t.

Instead, Frank huffs and holds the notebook back out to Karen.

She’s quiet, for a moment. Frank doesn’t look at her face; decides he doesn’t want to know. He takes his useless hands and fishes his cigarettes from his pocket, tucking one between his lips. He pulls out his lighter next – the grind of the wheel against the pad of his thumb when he lights up, a small anchor.

He’s exhaling menthol smoke towards the ground when Karen says, “A tiger?”

Frank makes a low noise in his throat and looks at her through his lashes, head still bowed. His right index finger worries the filter of his cigarette. “Yeah,” he answers, nodding once. “The…” _fuck_. The buzzing in his head lingers, like static electricity. Thoughts land as gentle shocks. He takes another drag, buying himself time to amend the sentence. “It was in the book.”

Karen nods. “That you read for class?” He’s dropped the meaning – somewhere between his memory and his mouth, his intent and his capability – and Karen’s picked it up. Easy as she’s latched onto every other thing Frank’s said. Sharp.

He nods. The memory is there, crystal clear. He can hear Lauren Buvoli and Father David. Can feel the goddamn book in his hands; rip in the cover, fraying at the spine. Same book he’s got on a shelf in his apartment. But he can’t remember the _thing_ , the thing that it fucking _is_.

“Must’ve been nine. Maybe ten. Class was for older kids, you know?” Frank tilts his head, shrugs. “Somethin’ to keep ‘em out of trouble on summer vacation. But my mom got me in. Probably begged the priest to take me on, give her a goddamn break.”

“Were you a high-maintenance kid?” Karen asks, tone cautiously light.

Frank huffs a laugh, dips his head to one side before straightening up again. “I was… alone a lot. Had a tendency to drift off.” He meets Karen’s eyes, his own expression suddenly warm. “‘Magine that.”

Karen’s mouth twitches, balancing on the edge of a smile. Frank watches her a moment before looking down at the sidewalk. He’s still standing, shifting his weight. Starts talking again. “But I had… energy, you know. And I could be a real prick.”

“‘Magine that.” Karen cuts in, a little under her breath. Like maybe she didn’t mean to say it. Frank smiles then, can’t help it. Left side of his mouth tugging up in a crooked grin, eyes narrowed; crowded by the laughter in his cheeks.

One of Karen’s hands reaches towards her face, as if to brush back a lock of hair, movement appearing involuntary; unnecessary. None has come loose, from where she’s gathered her hair at the crown of her head. She clasps her hands together in her lap, pale against the black cloth of her dress.

Frank continues. “Yeah. An’ my mom was younger than my dad, but. They were both practically senior citizens. They couldn’t control me.” There’s no bravado in his tone, but a distant humor accompanied by a note of sadness. Like he’s talking about someone else, someone he’s sorry nice folks like his mom and dad had to put up with. “The books, she had around. They were… an escape, I guess. Some people thought maybe I was quiet ‘cause I was shy, but mostly I just didn’t have shit to say to the assholes I went to school with.” He pauses, takes a drag. The next words out of his mouth are framed by smoke: “Spent a lotta time in my head. Dreaming up shit. Books held my attention better’n fuckin’ _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles._ ”

His voice is contemptuous. It startles a laugh out of Karen, which makes Frank raise his eyebrows momentarily, watching her. She bites the corner of her lip and Frank reins in an answering smile of his own. Instead, he acknowledges her laughter with a slight dip of his head, eyes crinkling as he keeps talking. “Thought some of it might go over my head, but. I liked it. Kipling, Coleridge.”

“Poets,” Karen says, encouraging.

Frank’s head jerks. He can feel his eyes snap wide. “Yeah.”

Karen nods, holding his gaze for a beat before dipping her head to glance over her notebook. He blinks rapidly before continuing. “Father David was good at reading out loud.” Frank’s face screws up a little, remembering. He scoffs. “He called on me in class, once. I wasn’t much for raising my hand, but he ah. Asked me about the – what we were reading. The poem.” He gestures at Karen’s notebook – the fucked up little doodle, the botched word.

Karen’s brow furrows. “A tiger?”

“ _The Tyger_ ,” Frank amends, shaping his mouth around the word like he’s memorizing it. Like it’ll make a difference, next time his frontal lobe decides to go on fucking sick leave. “Blake. Had me from the get-go. There’s this line, ah. _Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?_ ”

For a moment, Frank stares at something only he can see. He takes a final, deep pull on his cigarette, then sits back down on the bench. Karen watches him lift his foot and extinguish the cherry against the sole of his boot. Ash tumbles to the sidewalk. There isn’t a trashcan nearby; Frank pockets the butt.

“The Father wanted to get me talkin’, asked me what I thought,” Frank starts again, voice calm, legs splayed wide when he leans back on the bench. “I figured it meant God didn’t make the tiger, yeah? But Father didn’t like that. God made everything, right? So he starts telling me how there isn’t anyone _but_ God. That’s what it _really_ means.”

Karen’s face twists, mouth working like she’s holding her tongue. 

Frank glances at her, scanning her expression. A dry chuckle. “Yeah. I thought it was bullshit too,” he says.

Karen blinks at him a beat, mouth quirking in a small, close-mouthed smile to mirror Frank’s own. “Just,” she starts, shifting. Her body language is a little looser, voice less guarded. Easing into the conversation, rough start notwithstanding. “Why ask a kid for their opinion if you only want to hear your own?”

“Never been to Catholic school, huh?” Frank asks, dry.

Karen laughs; crosses her arms over her chest. Shakes her head.

Frank bites back a grin.

They’re looking at each other; rosewood-dark brown eyes against sapphire. A comfortable quiet extends itself, settling over them both with the late July heat. Soon enough, they break eye contact. Their smiles soften and fade. For a couple minutes, they’re just sharing a bench. People-watching.

Karen’s the first to come back from it.

“Do you, uhm,” Karen cocks her head, steels herself for the answer to a question it might not be a good idea to ask. “Do you still believe in God?”

Frank grimaces around a mean-sounding laugh. “You wanna talk about Santa Claus?”

He hears her sigh, then, so he turns. Gaze flicking Karen up and down once before fixing on the sidewalk by her feet – she’s wearing pumps, narrow at the toe. Flesh tone. The color is still a touch darker than Karen’s skin (fair, no sun lines that Frank can see).

Always with the heels. He doesn’t get it.

He’s looking at a freckle low on her inner right calf – just above the knob of her ankle – when he answers honestly. “Not sure I believed it back then, cards on the table. But it don’t really matter.”

Karen’s mouth falls open a bare centimeter. She whets her lips, asks, “How so?”

Frank shrugs and takes his eyes off Karen’s freckle in a single, abrupt motion. Facing straight ahead, he focuses on the press of the bench’s back against his spine. “Whatever you do, it shouldn’t depend on who’s watching.”

Karen is very quiet, after that. A different breed of quiet from just a few minutes before. When he glances over to her, she doesn’t seem upset. Least, not at him. She’s looking something fierce at the small clump of Frank’s cigarette ash on the sidewalk. Like she’s thinking about maybe asking him for one.

“Yeah, I didn’t think He helped much either,” Karen mutters. Her voice is husky. Embroiled in bitterness.

Instinctively, Frank drops his gaze. Lets the statement sit, tamps down the urge to light another cigarette. He gives her a minute before asking, “We done with the God talk yet?” His voice is low, cautiously teasing.

Or. He hopes it is.

When he hazards a look at her, her eyes are far away. She’s cradling her elbow in her right hand, chin resting in the palm of her left. Jolts a little, when she realizes he’s looking right at her, her fingers halfway covering her mouth.

She drops his gaze. “Uh, yeah,” she breathes. Bending to reach for her bag, tucking away her book; notebook; pen. She withdraws her camera from her bag. It’s small – Frank hadn’t really gotten a good look at it when she’d been taking pictures at The Chaste. And even though it had been on the table at the diner, he hasn’t given it much study until now.

It’s an old school Canon A-1 with the old logo above the lens; half a dozen knobs for settings. Shiny, texturized plastic grip holds. Big glass 35 millimeter lens. Karen’s nails – painted a soft gray – on the camera’s body. Her strap’s worn, frayed, comprised of primary colors woven in thick and thin horizontal stripes. The thing’s seen some use and then some, but Frank figures she’s good about looking after it, considering the way she carefully works it out of her bag and pops off the lens cap.

She meets his eyes again – the brief flash of _something_ gone from her face. Just blue, blue eyes and the gentle bow of her mouth. Karen tilts her head, letting the few loose strands of her hair fall from her face. “You, uh, want to go inside and get these photos?”

Frank grunts and pushes up from the bench in lieu of an answer.

The Safehouse is empty; Sunday afternoons are usually a slow day. Frank thinks Quentin’s uptown, playing house with his old man in exchange for the monthly allowance that keeps the space running. Dave’s probably asleep. Or having a late lunch with Joan.

He looks over to Karen, who’s fallen into step beside him. Camera out. Her eyes are narrowed a bit, blue gaze tracking from the high windows, tracing beams of light like sight lines. Follows the afternoon sun with a slight hardness to her mouth. All business.

That’s how it’s going to be, then.

Karen steps forward, gestures with her free hand to a spot, just in front of the stage. Someone had put up a drop cloth behind the stage the night before. Frank doesn’t remember what was on the schedule; maybe the monthly theater troupe. At any rate, he’d been at The Chaste, running the soundboard for Claire.

“Here,” she points. Frank grunts in reply, watching her take two steps back from where she’s instructed him to go.

Frank steps forward as ordered, reminding himself as he does that he agreed to this. He knows there have been photos taken of them performing; knows it simply by the fact that in ten years of playing it’s impossible for it _not_ to have happened. But this is different – intentional. He looks over at Karen. Shifts his weight. “How’s this work?”

She looks up from her camera, fingers stilling on a knob. Her pale lacquered nails stand out in sharp relief against the black body of the camera. When she meets his eyes something softens in her expression. It’s an inch of tension releasing from her cheeks, just under her wide eyes. Her throat bobs as she swallows. “Just act natural, but stay where you are.” She jerks her chin towards the stage behind him. “I want that in the background.”

He follows her gaze to the drop cloth upstage. It’s simple canvas, off white. Frank grunts in approval. “Don’t need me to sit or some shit? Look at you?”

Karen just shakes her head. “No,” she answers quietly. “I think the more candid the better.”

He spares a look at her. Remembers her standing there a week ago: big doe eyes, clearly scared fucking shitless, but still as keen and ready as a well-honed knife. “Mmh,” he nods; _tsks_. “Since it’s a date n’ all.”

His cheap shot sticks the landing: Page flushes instantly, and Frank’s eyes tighten in a secret smile right as she flips him the bird. “Just stand over there and look at the wall.” 

“Yes ma’am,” Frank mutters, reaching up to adjust his jacket. As he settles his weight, he hears the camera click.

 

* * *

 

**Frank Castle, On The Record  
** Karen Page, for Noisey/Vice

 

Just for a minute, try to be Frank Castle. You’re 19 years old and standing in hot sand. The sun is beating down on your neck. There is noise – yelling, gunfire. The only thing that you know for sure is that you’re surrounded by an enemy that wants you dead. 

A year ago, in the recruitment office, someone told you that the Marine Corps will break you down, but build you back up – stronger than ever before. You watched the Twin Towers go down from your childhood home. _Stronger than before_ sounds pretty good.

You survive the first round in the desert. You excel, even. Being a Marine is something you’re good at. You understand the consequences of being a Marine. They’re your comfort, when you’re rolling down Iraqi highways in an open-top humvee you’ve had just four months to train with. You understand that there are consequences that come with laziness, lack of foresight, bad intel, and cowardice (or, as Castle himself puts it, “being a chickenshit”). You know that those consequences come for the soldiers who make stupid decisions. So, you just have to make smart ones.

Except someone else flips the switch. Those consequences will never come for General Mattis, nor for the commander that Castle refers to only by his call-sign, _Godfather_. Instead, those consequences will come for Frank Castle in January of 2004. They will come at night, when Frank – a Captain in the United States Marine Corps – and the men serving under and alongside him, will not be able to see in the dark because battalion HQ didn’t bring enough batteries to run their night-vision devices.

They will come in the shape of a bullet, shot from a gun belonging to Charlie Company – the brother to Frank’s own Bravo Company. In the middle of the night on January 10, 2004, Frank Castle will be pronounced dead. And, nearly a full minute later, his heart will start beating again. He will be 20 years old.

Castle describes being shot in awful detail. With the brusque accuracy of a seasoned fighter, he recalls the radio communications which immediately preceded the event, the angle of the shot, the caliber of the bullet.

When he discusses the exit wound, he gestures to a small, bruise-colored mark on the back of his head, imprinted on his skin just beneath a more pronounced indent in the flesh and bone there. He describes how, even though his helmet hadn’t stopped the bullet, it still saved his life by holding the shape of his skull together. 

Later, heavily redacted United States Marine Corps documentation will refer to his experience as “the incident in question.”

To understand Frank Castle as he is now, we have to understand that Frank Castle died in the middle of the night in the cold Iraqi desert. What came back was also named Frank Castle. But he would never be the same.

Born Francis Anthony Castiglione in Newark, New Jersey on October 15, 1983, Frank Castle was a quiet kid. The only child of first generation Italian immigrants, Castle was raised on a steady diet of union talk and classic literature. The former is courtesy of his longshoreman father, while the latter he readily ascribes to his mother, Louisa (about whom Castle speaks more freely than he does just about anyone or anything else). 

He’s quick to trace the origin of his lyricism to her influence. Yet “writing was always important” to Castle – so much so that his mother enrolled him in a summer poetry class at the age of 10. 

Soon enough, Castle was submerged in the lush world of the Romantics. 

“[William] Blake had me from the get-go,” Castle explains one day, standing on a Hell’s Kitchen sidewalk in his default attire of boots, jeans, and a dark jacket; apparently unfazed by the mid-July heat. He describes how Blake’s poem, _The Tyger_ , stuck with him from the moment the teacher read it aloud in class.

Later, in my apartment, I re-read the poem in its entirety for the first time in years. As I do, I can’t help but draw comparisons between Blake’s _Tyger_ and Castle himself: _And when thy heart began to beat / What dread hand? & what dread feet? _

But on that sidewalk, under the midday sun, it’s another couplet that occupies Castle’s thoughts: _Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?_

They’re two questions that have spelled trouble for Castle since he was prompted to share his thoughts on them with the class, over two decades ago. His answer was matter-of-fact: the Tyger must not have been made by God in the first place.

His theory was less than welcome in the staunchly Roman Catholic school. Castle’s teacher – a priest he remembers only as “Father David” – was none too pleased, and ultimately seized the opportunity to remind the rest of the students not to worry; that God made the Tyger, too.

Looking at Castle’s face as he speaks, it’s apparent that time has not dampened his annoyance at Father David’s reaction. It’s also apparent that Castle has no trouble accessing annoyance, discontent, aggression – any feeling that lives in the realm of anger.

As a kid, Castle freely admits he “could be a real prick.” Energetic yet socially reserved – the result of a different set of priorities from those of his peers, rather than shyness – he spent the majority of his time “in [his] head, dreaming up shit.” 

His parents had opted to have a child later in life, and so – older than most parents in the neighborhood – they had their work cut out for them.

Castle phrases it succinctly: “[My parents] couldn’t control me.” There’s more than a little self-deprecation in his voice when he says it. There’s less when he continues, “I didn’t have shit to say to the assholes I went to school with.”

This is not surprising to hear. Castle is nothing if not bluntly articulate. Grammatically, he speaks in incomplete sentences. Practically, he uses only as many words as are necessary, often imparting the bulk of his meaning with a gesture or a pointed look.

Just sitting on a bench – or in a diner booth drinking coffee, or on a green room couch after playing a set, or standing on the sidewalk, helping himself to a smoke – Castle is unrelentingly physical, steering himself through the world like a man more accustomed to communicating with his body than his words.

Considering the spectacular combination of athleticism and violence to be witnessed at an average Leatherneck show, it’s not hard to see why. The same overwhelming physicality that contributes to Castle’s captivating stage presence makes for strange small talk. Both onstage and off, there is something in Castle’s tawny eyes that burns.

When he sits down across from me at the diner where we’ve decided to begin our interview, the effect of his gaze is unsettling, as if he is looking at and _through_ me simultaneously; a thousand yard stare that, despite my best efforts, is no less startling in light of the knowledge that he is a trained sniper.

There’s an ever-present severity to Castle’s features that’s only heightened by a fastidiously maintained buzzcut. Up close, his face becomes an elevation map of collected traumas: bruises dot his cheekbones and jaw. High on his cheek and temple, there are scars small enough to be noticeable only in a certain light. His nose is so wide set after an unknown number of breaks that I’m told by a bandmate – perhaps apocryphally, though I’m inclined to believe it – that Castle can move the bones individually.

And then there are the bullet scars. The first is high on the right side of his cranium, nestled a bare inch or so past his hairline where it cut through helmet, bone, and brain matter. The second is lower on the back of his skull, marking where the bullet exited through those same materials in reverse order: brain matter, bone, helmet.

I first notice the scar when I am invited to band practice, during which I’m treated to a rare performance of “Death’s Head”, off of their first EP, _Tiny Ugly World_. It’s a sonic artillery assault, and truth be told, I think I’m being tested by the performance. Leatherneck is a unit as tightly knit as that of any family or elite military squad, while encompassing the care, commitment, familiarity, and efficiency of both.

Castle started writing music during the almost two years he spent in rehab, relearning how to accomplish once-straightforward tasks like brushing his teeth or buttoning a shirt.

Writing, Castle explains, “helps. Getting some things out of your head. And that time in the hospital, [I] didn’t have much to think about except what put me there.”

After all, coming back from the dead is one thing. Learning to live again is another.

Leatherneck’s first full-length tells that story, down to the album art: it’s Castle’s own skull on the record’s cover, and his brain scans on the back. So, to understand Leatherneck – an obstacle in itself, considering the band has, until now, placed a strict embargo on press – one has to understand that the fury and the loss, the dread and the violence, in which they’ve steeped their sound, is not something that has happened to Frank Castle. It’s something that _is_ happening to him; an ongoing state of action and reaction.

A week after I’ve had my first sit down with Castle, I get a phone call from a man named Gunner Henderson, inquiring about my profile. He speaks with a thick Kentucky accent; his voice is soft, his words emphatic. He’s heard about the piece through the grapevine, and wishes to express his concern that _Noisey_ may be unfair regarding Castle’s military service.

In no uncertain terms, Henderson – who’d served in Castle’s unit, on that last fateful tour in Iraq – has called to set the record straight.

“We were the sword of the righteous,” Henderson assures me. “That’s what I believed, when I enlisted.” Henderson, I learn quickly, is a devout Christian. But the things he saw “over there” made him doubt and question the faith he’d been raised in. A faith that, according to him, was part and parcel of his faith in the United States of America. It was this faith that compelled him to enlist, a handful of years before Castle.

Castle, at the time of his discharge, was a freshly promoted captain in the Marines’ most elite sect: Force Recon. It’s this honorific that Henderson uses when talking about Castle, to this day: “I’d heard good things, about Captain Castle, when I got transferred to his company. [He] had a hell of a reputation.”

Henderson takes measured pauses throughout our conversation, and seems to consider his words carefully. “He had the utmost respect for the enemy,” he says. “Used to get him into shit with a lot of the men. They used to call him _Punisher_ , being there were a lot of things most men’d let slide that Captain Castle wouldn’t put up with.”

When I press Henderson to elaborate, he obliges: “[Castle] would give anyone who desecrated corpses or denied the enemy things like food – Marines who’d piss in bags of rice we found, stuff like that – shit details. Make ‘em dig latrines. That kinda thing.” Henderson speaks with minor hesitation. It smacks of having been raised to mind his manners, and he seems painfully aware that war and polite conversation rarely, if ever, mix. It’s with this hesitation that Henderson quietly but firmly cuts off my line of questioning, saying simply, “There are things no one should get away with, doesn’t matter if they’re on your team or not. Captain Castle knew that.”

Henderson goes on to express regret and contempt for the men who’d given Castle the combat nickname.

But in showcasing the same dry aplomb with which Castle refers to himself as a “head case”, Castle’s knuckles now read _PUNISHER_ in dark, medieval script. Frank Castle is the kind of man to take an insult and wear it like a badge of honor.

(Unlike the Navy Cross, which Castle was awarded at 21, a year before the shot to the head that would eventually lead to his discharge. Second only to the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross signifies extraordinary heroism in combat. When I ask Frank if he has it on display anywhere, he mutters that it’s “in a box, somewhere,” and is quick to change the subject.)

These days, however, Castle isn’t assigning men to dig latrines for their malnourished brothers-in-arms (early on during the invasion of Iraq, Force Recon’s upper command lost a supply truck; the marines were subsequently rationed one MRE per day to survive). Instead, he’s doing what he refers to as “no platforming.”

Those familiar with antifa tactics will recognize the term. A specific method of fighting hate speech and fascism that’s seen a recent surge in popularity, “no platforming” articulates a refusal to provide a platform for fascist rhetoric. To put it plainly: if someone is spouting hateful shit, don’t allow them to hold the mic.

“[Fascists and predators] ain’t ever gonna be welcome at our shows,” Castle promises. “We put ‘em down and they stay down.”

What Castle is referring to, is the violence that sets Leatherneck’s shows apart from any other in the national hardcore scene. Castle’s stage presence is not only his imposing silhouette, intense eyes, and a surprising arsenal of mic tricks fit to make Iggy Pop jealous.

It’s his – and his bandmates’ – willingness to wade into the pit if he, or anyone else, recognizes the need. Whether it be to help someone in danger, or eradicate unwanted elements (neo-Nazis in particular are, according to Castle, a chronic problem in the scene: “[there are] a couple at every other goddamn show”), Leatherneck are prepared to do what’s required.

From the bruises that gather around the letters inked into his knuckles, it’s fair to say that _PUNISHER_ means more to Castle than a nickname. It’s a method of operation that he takes pride in. It seems age and experience has only drawn Castle closer to the _Tyger_ that captured his imagination as a child.

“The Marines Corps,” explains Henderson, who’s now discharged from the military, “gives you a certain set of skills. Most of the time, they don’t match up to the skills needed for civilian life. But the other thing the Marine Corps gives you, is a family. The Captain found a way to marry both, which is a hell of a lot better than most of us manage.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Castle, in word and deed. Leatherneck is a unit beholden to no one. They are precise and professional when ‘on duty’, during their practices or planning an upcoming tour; but off duty, they bicker and tease with the easy affection of a family.

Aside from Castle, the band is rounded out with guitarist Rachel Cole-Alves, another ex-Marine (though she and Frank never served in combat together); drummer Micro Lieberman, a former Air Force drone sensor turned whistleblower; and Kathy O’Brien, a manic, berserker bassist who gives me a different answer each time I ask about her life before the band.

(On the eve of this profile’s publication, O’Brien’s pre-Leatherneck work history supposedly includes: circus freak, deep sea diver, and hot dog saleswoman, among others.)

Despite the chaos of their live performances, Leatherneck exude dedication and professionalism. As the hometown heroes of Hell’s Kitchen, they have a near weekly standing show Friday nights at The Safehouse, a DIY venue operated out of an old warehouse in the Kitchen.

The closest thing Leatherneck has to a forward operating base, The Safehouse is exactly what you’d expect from a venue that’s home to a crowd of die-hards loyal to Leatherneck’s anti-imperialist dogma.

It plays host to open mic nights for young LGBT poets, a monthly Food Not Bombs meal, free self-defense classes (often led by none other than Leatherneck’s own guitarist, Cole-Alves) labelled “WTF” (women and trans-friendly), and myriad other events likely to get you crossed off your racist aunt Susan’s Christmas card list. On any given night, you can find a variety of people selling and trading zines on anything from prison abolition to anti-Zionist Judaism.

It’s there that I’m invited to watch Leatherneck practice one afternoon in early July. It’s also the first time I meet the band, aside from Castle. They’re cagy and defensive when I walk in and, to be honest, I think they’re going to eat me alive.

But they don’t. Some minor ego-bruising is traded – on both our parts – but at some point, after the first half of band practice and during the following break (to prepare and eat dinner together, without ever leaving the premises of The Safehouse), I’ve been brought into the fold. Which means I’m christened with a new wave of insults, as well as a nickname that I won’t be including in this article.

Lieberman, Leatherneck’s drummer and occasional producer (their production credits include both the EP _Tiny Ugly World_ and Leatherneck’s sole full-length LP, _Front Toward Enemy_ ) explains this newfound, almost aggressive camaraderie in very simple terms: “Frank trusts you, I trust you.”

Trust between subject and journalist is always the goal; it’s what we strive for. Establishing that kind of relationship in the short period of time typically allotted to write a piece is a skill in itself. 

Yet this, with Leatherneck, feels more significant. Because for them, trust is most immediately a product of shared experience and real risk: they’ve shed blood with, and for, each other. What’s more, the exchange is not only of trust, but of ideology. 

For Castle and his band, _Front Toward Enemy_ is not just an album. Nor is it the instructional label on a claymore mine (700 steel balls, packed to burst, coming at you 1,000 meters per second). It’s a rule of engagement; a mission statement; a promise. 

The philosophy (and I can only imagine the way Castle’s face would twist at that term, all but telling me to _fuck off_ ) is explained to me by Castle himself, immediately following Leatherneck’s four hour practice.

In short: apply all available energy, full-throttle, towards the enemy.

Frank Castle’s enemy is a system built on inequality, systemic violence, and promises that were never intended to be kept in the first place. In a word: America.

One song into a Leatherneck set at The Safehouse and you’ll know that Frank Castle intends to keep his promises. They all do. And I’ll see you there.

 

_You can see Leatherneck on Friday nights at The Safehouse or on tour, with dates available on their website._

 

* * *

 

Karen finishes the profile on the following Wednesday afternoon, blatantly ignoring the growing pile of work in her email inbox for this week’s episode of _AltTrish_ . By the time she’s done, she can’t quite believe it’s over, sitting somewhere out in the mystery space of the internet, waiting on Ellison to open it in his email. _It’s over._

And honestly? 

Karen feels ground down, nearly _winded_ by the time she hits the ‘send’ button. Like she’s run a marathon or been turned inside out. Raw. Off balance. Spent. _It’s over_. 

The late afternoon sun beats down on her through wide office windows. The heat makes Karen feel soupy and warm, limbs heavy. Four P.M. sun sinking into her bones and turning time into molasses. _It’s over._

By the time Trish is back from her late-late lunch and she passes Karen’s desk, heels clicking on the office’s hardwood floors once, and then twice as she doubles back, it’s more than obvious that Karen is done for. She’s slumped over her desk, hands at her temples, reading the same line over and over again in a Wikipedia article about foley work in radio drama.

“You alright?” Trish asks.

“Y-yeah,” Karen manages, forcing herself to nod as she swallows and slides the fingers on her temples back through her hair, combing it away from her face. She raises her gaze. Trish’s jewel-toned eyes are narrowed in concern. “Fine.” Karen waves a hand towards her computer. “Just. Y’know. Screens.”

Trish raises an eyebrow at the weak excuse. “You look like you could use a break.”

Karen shakes her head. “I’m good, I was just…” she glances back to her screen. It’s not exactly a shining endorsement to her productivity, considering she’d only ended up on the page about foley because she was researching some sound engineering technique she’d lied about possessing on her job application, but ended up in a Wikipedia wormhole instead. Her sentence trails off at the realization. _It’s over._

But Trish’s reply is an easy, bright-pink MAC lipstick smile. “C’mon,” she says, jerking her head towards the door. “I think we’re done for the day.”

It’s Karen’s turn to frown, brow folding in worry and apology. “Trish – I can’t, uh –”

Trish just shrugs. A flash of mischief lights her elegant features. “You think someone’s gonna tattle?”

It’s an expression that’s so shockingly _Jessica Jones_ that, for a moment, Karen wants to ask if she’s in disguise. She’s a private detective. Karen’s certain it’s happened at least once.

Karen glances over her email. There are no new messages, nothing from Ellison, and yet – _it’s still over_. She relents, exhaling heavily. “Okay.”

When Karen and Trish arrive at The Chaste, she’s ushered towards a booth near the back of the bar’s seating area. She can just make out the tossed dirty blond curls of Danny Rand and the dark brown shine of Luke Cage’s head over the top of the booth before they make their way over. 

Jessica Jones holds court in the middle of the C-shaped curve of the booth, her booted feet tucked up into Cage’s lap. To her left sits Danny, a slender Asian girl sitting on his other side. She looks up at Karen and Trish’s approach. Karen’s impressed with the mystery girl’s spatial awareness – the bar is already loud, a band Karen doesn’t recognize playing a set.

“Hey Karen!” Danny says, with jarring enthusiasm. She doesn’t remember ever introducing herself to him. Just as her brows pinch in confusion, he says, “Your photos from our show looked awesome on Instagram.”

Danny Rand follows her on Instagram. Okay. She can’t control the bewildered look on her face when she says, “Uhm, thank you?” She can feel her pulse hammering in her throat, hyper-aware of four sets of eyes sliding towards her. The weight of their focus lands squarely on her shoulders. Karen digs her heels in and resolves to bear it.

Trish slides into the booth first, taking the spot next to Luke. Jessica leans over him – one hand, Karen notes curiously, twisted tightly in his yellow t-shirt – and kisses Trish hello. Luke’s free hand – the one not holding his beer – thumbs into Jessica’s knee.

 _Huh_.

“Well hey there Rage Page,” Jessica says, red-stained lips smirking up at her when she settles back. Karen’s cheeks heat at the nickname. It lands uncomfortably in her sternum. 

(Frank Castle’s voice filters through her mind: _Pissed off gets shit done_.)

Luckily, Danny and the girl next to him – introducing herself as _Colleen_ with a low voice and a gracious smile – shuffle over in the booth, opening up a place for Karen on the end. She sits, tries to will the pink from her cheeks, hair falling into her eyes when she looks down at the tabletop. But Jessica continues on, “Heard you lit a fire under Mitchell Ellison’s comfortable ass.”

Karen’s gaze snaps up. “How did you –”

Trish’s glare for Jessica is glacial, pure ice queen beauty in her vividly blue eyes. “Jessica’s the occasional stringer for _Vice_ , when she’s not spying on people,” Trish answers, guilt trip pointed directly at her girlfriend. It draws a chuckle out of Luke. 

Jessica’s hands come up in defense. “I was trying to be _nice_.” She’s wearing black fingerless gloves, even in July. (Karen really doesn’t understand what the fuck to do with all of these New Yorkers who seem incapable of dressing appropriately for the season. She’s been reduced to wearing linen sundresses, the city’s humidity making every part of her _sticky_.)

Karen raises an eyebrow, just as Danny leans in across Colleen to say, “Don’t take it personally, it’s just how she expresses her affection.” His eyes are unblinking and dead serious.

Colleen scoffs and pushes him back into his seat as Jessica rolls her eyes.

“ _Not_ true,” Jessica returns. She rocks forward, sitting up and dropping her legs onto the floor in a single fluid motion. Elbow on the table, propping her chin up on one hand, she raises her glass with the other and finishes off her whiskey. The glass thuds when she sets it down again. “What I was _going_ to say was that Ellison _deserves_ a few fires under his comfortable, overpaid ass.” 

Karen laughs; it bursts out of her without warning. She’s more surprised by it than she thinks anyone else is. “I’ll drink to that,” she says, when everyone looks to the source of the sound. Inevitably, she feels the heat in her face reach up, coloring the tips of her ears.

“Figured you would,” Jessica replies, her smile thin and full of mirth. She leans forward and grabs the bottle of Jameson from the center of the table, pouring out a glass for herself as well as filling one of the two empty glasses deposited next to it.

“That’s for Matt –” Danny starts.

Karen opens her mouth to protest the drink immediately. She doesn’t want to intrude, doesn’t want to –

“He’ll be here later.” Luke’s voice is unsure. He looks to Jessica for confirmation.

“Dinner date with Foggy?” she offers, her face screwing up a little – the silent _I don’t fucking know_ rings clear in the curl of her lip. She shrugs and passes Karen her whiskey. 

 _Huh_ , Karen thinks again. She calls up her memory of meeting Foggy and Matt at The Safehouse, recontextualizes the casual way they’d touched each other. The fond surprise on Matt’s face when Foggy told him he’d checked out Karen’s feature on his band. She’s glad, suddenly, that she didn’t flirt with Matt.

“I didn’t know that they were –” 

Karen’s cut off with a laugh that reaches all around the table, a ripple effect. The tips of her ears start to burn in earnest before Colleen supplies, friendly, “They’re not. We all thought so too, but.” Colleen shrugs.

“But Matt’s with me,” a familiar voice says, near Karen’s shoulder. She turns her head and sees Claire the bartender smiling down at her. “Foggy and Matt are exes of the co-dependent variety.”

“Oh,” Karen breathes, nodding slowly. She feels spun, slightly uncomfortable with the swift way that the conversation has diverted, reminding her that she’s an interloper here, not quite _part_ of the group. A traveller.  

(And she remembers sharply how her last conversation with Claire had come to an abrupt close: Karen asking the wrong questions, Claire not giving any actual answers. It makes Karen’s leg twitch with anxiety. She concentrates on her whiskey.)

Claire borrows a chair from a nearby table, sliding it over and perching at the mouth of the booth. Jess passes her the bottle of Jameson. Claire pours herself a drink, and looks up at Karen. There’s a gentle upward tilt to her generous mouth. “How’s your piece on Frank going?” 

Karen swallows convulsively and looks down at her glass, which is somehow mostly empty. “Does everyone know about that?”

Claire chuckles. “Not everyone. We’re just a small community. And Luisa told me about you coming in to harass him. She was kind of impressed. You’ve got balls, girl.”

Just as Karen exhales a sheepish laugh, Danny Rand’s hands drop onto the table. “Wait a minute,” he says, a wildness seizing his eyes. “You’re doing a piece on _Frank Castle_?”

Oh, Christ. Karen downs the rest of her whiskey and slides the glass towards Jess, who has already taken the bottle back from Claire and is in the middle of pouring herself another few fingers. Karen nods. “Finished it today, actually,” she murmurs.

Trish’s eyes fly wide open, her magenta-tinted lips parting in surprise; congratulatory delight lights up her features. “You didn’t tell me you’d finished! What did Ellison say? When’s it going up?”

Karen shrinks under the laser-focus that the entire table has wheeled upon her. Her face feels _hot_ as she fidgets, pushing a hand through her hair. “He, uh, hasn’t gotten back to me,” she admits. “I just sent it off.” Swallows again, nervous. “Today.”

“Well you should celebrate!” Trish insists, pushing the bottle of whiskey and emptied glass back towards Karen. “Your first big piece. That’s huge.”

Karen barely meets Trish’s gaze through her lashes. “Thanks, Trish,” she says, soft, wrapping her fingers around the neck of the bottle.

“You’re new to journalism?” Colleen asks, low, taking a sip from her own glass. The liquid in it is clear. Karen can’t make a solid judgement on if it’s water or vodka, but given the unclouded focus in Colleen’s almond-shaped eyes, she thinks it’s water.

Karen shrugs in reply and pours herself another glass. (If she keeps herself warm with whiskey, maybe she can pretend it doesn’t feel like she’s walking across cracking ice, here.) “I, uh, graduated with my B.A. in journalism a year ago,” she says, carefully weaving around the landmines in her memory. _Do not think about it_. “This is my first freelance piece.”

The bottle makes its way around the table, glasses filling, passing through hands and motions that seem so comfortable, so worn into the beats and rhythms of the conversation. It’s a harmony Karen can’t make out, doesn’t know the key. She watches.

Danny tries to grab the bottle from Jessica, who flips him off and pours her glass first, topping off Trish and Luke before passing it along to Claire, only then making its way back to Danny, handed across Karen and Colleen. There’s laughter, layered chatter Karen isn’t quite listening to. 

“What’re we celebrating?” Matt Murdock’s voice asks from behind her, reedy and full of laughter. She startles; didn’t hear him approach. Jessica catches it and Karen watches her mouth quirk up in a snicker that’s quieted by a glare from Trish.

Claire turns in her seat. “Hey,” she says, reaching a hand out to touch Matt’s wrist. The gesture is sweet, seemingly reflexive. He tilts his head at the sound of her voice. His wide smile shifts, swaying from laughter into something softer. His hand twists to catch Claire’s and Karen looks away as she leads him down to sit beside Trish.

It happens just as Foggy Nelson’s bright voice says, “Karen Page! Hey, good to see you!”

“Foggy,” Karen breathes, guilt already beginning to crawl up her throat at the sight of his dimples and coppery blonde hair – he’s wearing it up today, in some sort of plaited bun. He’d asked her out for drinks over a week ago; she’d never replied.

Her side of the booth is already crowded; yet she presses in closer to give him space to drop in next to her. He smells like hemp soap and when he waves, holographic nail polish catches the bar lights.

She’s reminded, acutely, of Micro. Karen wonders what they’re doing right now.

“How’ve you been?” she asks, trying to be polite – to be _normal_ – just as Jessica says, “We’re celebrating Page’s first piece being sent off to _Vice_.”

“ _Vice_?” Foggy echoes. His eyes – green and guileless – light up. “Seriously? That’s great!” 

“ _Noisey_ , technically,” Karen corrects, a little vague. She’s fading fast under the spotlight. Every moment of this is a twofold reminder: that she doesn’t _belong_ here, that she’s a stranger whose novelty may wear off at any moment; and, again, that the piece is _over_.

Foggy continues, cheerily oblivious, “On what?”

Danny Rand leans in and answers for her. “Frank Castle,” he says, serious and low. There’s a note of reverence in his voice that might make Karen laugh, if she could just will her insides to unclench.

“ _Frank Castle_?” Matt echoes. One eyebrow arches over his red glasses. The cane snaps as he folds it, wrapping the elastic around the aluminum before he sets it on the table. His mouth twists in surprise and something else, something conflicted that catches in Karen’s gut.

There’s disbelief in his voice and it makes Karen want to snap back _Castiglione, actually,_ if only to throw him off, wipe the nonplussed look off his face. She clenches her teeth and swallows back the urge with the remainder of her whiskey. “That’d be the one,” she says. Her voice is lower than she intends. Colder, too.

“Huh,” Matt replies. He takes a drink from the beer he’d sat down with. “What was that like?” His tone smacks of barely withheld judgement.

 _Nice_ isn’t the word she wants to use. Frank Castle is not _nice_. He is – decent, Karen thinks. Kind, maybe – in his own way. Honorable, most definitely.

But mostly what comes to mind is – _You seemed like a pain in the ass and a pain in the ass gets the job done, right?_

She sets her glass down. “He’s…” she trails off, hands still curved around her empty glass. Matt’s head is tilted towards her, brow furrowed as he listens intently. His fingers roll over his collapsed cane. Karen is reminded, immediately, of Frank’s own fidgeting. Matt’s feels different – the way he rolls his cane under the pads of his fingers seems more deliberate, always stopping their motion just short of the table’s edge.

He’s mapping out the boundaries of the surface, Karen realizes.

“He, uhm,” Karen stammers, catching herself staring. “He’s not what everyone thinks.”

Matt raises an eyebrow again.

Foggy speaks instead. “You watched that set, right? Frank Castle is –”

“Good at what he does,” Karen finishes, hearing Frank across from her, saying, _I take pride in that_. “But he’s not always onstage, right?”

Claire smirks. It piques Karen’s attention. “She’s got a point,” Claire offers. An olive branch. Karen stares at her. So does Foggy. Matt angles towards her when she speaks. Claire doesn’t let him fire off whatever comment’s building in his throat. “I told you,” she continues, speaking to Matt, this time, “I’ve known Frank a long time. He’s not an asshole.” 

Karen leans forward. “How long have you known Frank?”

“Maybe a little over ten years,” Claire answers, shifting in her chair to meet Karen’s curious gaze. Karen watches her hand slide over Matt’s on the table, stilling it. He flips his wrist immediately, threading his fingers through Claire’s. His thumb drags over the back of her hand. 

Karen blinks in surprise at her answer. “Aside from being a bartender at _this_ lovely establishment,” Claire continues, offering Karen a grin that reaches all the way to her calm, dark eyes, “I’m also an EMT,” she finishes.  

Karen rears back a little in her seat, nodding once. “Oh.” Yep. That would explain it. 

“So what, _Vice_ asked you to cover Frank?” Foggy asks, jumping back into the conversation. His eyes are wide, a curve appearing in his brow as he asks, like he’s trying to figure out just why _she’d_ be the one tasked with such a thing.

“Uh, no,” Karen says, shaking her head and reaching for the bottle, only to find it empty. Shit. She smacks her lips before looking to Foggy next to her. “I pitched them.”

“Really?” Matt’s question. They seem to take turns speaking. _Exes of the co-dependent variety_. No one else at the table seems caught in the slings and arrows of a Nelson-Murdock interrogation. Danny looks on, apparently eager to hear Karen dish. Claire’s focus has shifted – she’s talking to Colleen, now.

“Yep,” Karen confirms, with a terse nod. She’s not in the mood to rehash the conversation she’d had when she first arrived for Matt and Foggy’s sakes. She fiddles with the empty Jameson bottle. “Anyone else want another drink?” she asks, forcefully loud to be heard above the music and the half dozen or so separate conversations flitting around the table.

“God, yes,” Jessica replies, raising not only her own empty glass, but Trish’s as well. (Luke, to his credit, appears to be the only person drinking water. Karen notices a motorcycle helmet on the table, next to his elbow.) Danny echoes his bandmate, lifting his glass.

Karen turns her head. “Foggy?” He’s blocking her exit.

His eyes widen, brief, the expression of surprise is quickly replaced with warm amusement. A smile, complete with dimples. “Sure,” he says.

Karen blinks, confused for a beat before getting it: he thinks she’s asking if he wants a drink. Fuck. She pulls a careful smile across her face. It’s weak. _Christ, Just be_ normal _, Karen_. “Uh, sure,” she manages. The heat in her cheeks renews itself.

Jessica catches the exchange: her flush, Foggy’s pleasantly surprised smile. “Fogwell, you dense shit, you’re in her way.” 

One shared bottle later, Karen feels _drunk_ – loose limbs, hot face, words heavy and misshapen on her tongue – with absolutely none of the perks. She’s perched at the edge of the booth, having just pressed Foggy further into the booth when she’d returned with their new bottle an hour ago, and her new position has only succeeded in serving as a physical reminder of her otherness in this group.

Karen’s not _one of them_. She can’t pick up the tune, can’t figure out the rhythm of their flying insults – which are friendly and which are not – and _definitely_ can’t follow the goddamn thread of the conversation. At some point she thinks it’d switched from band related shop talk to work horror stories and that’s where she’d veered off the path completely.

By the time Karen reaches the bottom of her last glass of whiskey, she misses the straightforwardness of Leatherneck; the absence of frills, of politely withheld comments, of small talk for small talk’s sake. Misses the way she felt like she could at least hold her own.

“I’m gonna… I think I gotta head out,” she says in the middle of a table-wide debate on the legal logistics of the Republic in the _Star Wars_ films. Karen stands up.

Foggy looks up at her. “Oh shit,” he says, standing with her. His hands knock an empty beer bottle as he pushes up. Karen reaches out to catch it and fails, glass knocking against the tabletop. “I’ll walk you.”

“I’m good,” she insists. It’s – nice of him to offer. But he’s more fucked up than she is, Karen is pretty sure. (Though, considering it takes both of them to return Foggy’s empty beer to a standing position, maybe not.) Foggy looks like he’s going to protest. So Karen puts her hand on his shoulder and eases him back down to his seat. “I’m good – I’ll call a cab,” she lies.

Danny swings up from his seat and reaches across Colleen and Foggy, taking one of Karen’s hands in both of his. “It was lovely to meet you, Karen,” he says, expression more grave than Karen’s seen it all night.

She doesn’t manage to hide her bewilderment, which ignites a round of laughter from everyone. “Danny, let the woman go,” Claire says as Karen’s already whiskey-pink skin flushes that much further.

“Uhm, yeah,” Karen breathes as Danny’s hands release hers. “You too.” She looks over to Trish, who smiles at her. “Trish,” she says, both as a goodbye and a pathetic _thanks for inviting me out, I hated it but you’re my boss and these are your friends and I have none_.

Karen flees.

It’s dark by the time she walks out of The Chaste, which Karen supposes must be some small victory. That she made it that long with a group of people.

Well, aside from Leatherneck, whom she managed to spend virtually the entire day with. But they feel – different. Her whiskey-warmed mind supplies _safe_ , and apparently she’s too far gone to appreciate how strange that sounds.

She wishes it was a Friday night. Wishes she could walk the handful of blocks to the edge of the Kitchen and end up at the doors of The Safehouse, find them onstage. Lose herself in the structured cacophony of their set; let it slam into her, leaving no room in her skull for anything but the sound and the fury.

It feels like something is pounding against her ribcage from the inside, but it’s not her heart. Something trapped, and _hungry_.

Karen thinks of _The Tyger_. When she was a senior in high school, their senior trip was to the Bronx Zoo. It was the first time she’d ever seen a tiger. Their massive, watchful eyes. She’d been surprised by how lanky they could seem, the way their bodies moved; at once sharp and smooth, lithe and powerful. Muscles, sinew, bone. Undeniable. A force made flesh.

She’s dialing before she even realizes she’s taken her phone out.

Frank’s answering machine is mechanical, the default disembodied female voice reading out his number and instructing her to leave a message and Karen stumbles, doing just that without precisely meaning to. “Uhm, hi, Frank – sorry, it’s a little late. I, ah…”

 _Accidentally dialed your number?_ No.

 _Wanted to talk to you about William Blake?_ Fuck.

“Just had a few more questions for you and wanted to set up a time to sit down, if you had the … the time. Uh, give me a call back when – whenever you’re able? Thanks.”

She almost hangs up but catches herself, nearly dropping the phone before jerking it back up to her ear.

“This is Karen Page? Uhm. I’ll. Yeah.”

Shit.

“Good night.”

 _Shit_.

 

* * *

 

He calls her back the next morning, because he’s Frank Castle.

They agree to meet for lunch, same place as before. Karen’s stomach knots during the walk over, searching her mind for questions she doesn’t need to ask, like turning over couch cushions for spare change. What she has to show for it in the end is the journalistic equivalent of a penny, a moldy gummy worm, and some lint.

Worse, when she walks into Lou’s Diner, Frank is already there; pressed into the far corner booth, scanning the door for her entrance.

He’s less bruised than usual, a faded yellow blemish high on his cheekbone the only remaining sign of whatever altercation he’d gotten into last. His hands – one laid on the table as Karen approaches, the other curved around a cup of steaming, black coffee – tell a different story. Blue and purple combining with black ink, a scrape on one knuckle. The bruising is more pronounced on his right.

Whoever it was had been grossly outmatched. Karen almost feels bad for the other guy.

She slides into the booth. “Sorry I’m late,” she says, in lieu of a hello. It’s _12:01_.

Mid-sip, Frank raises an eyebrow over the chipped mug in his hand. It’s enough to make Karen drop his gaze, busy herself with unloading notebook, pen, and recorder from her bag. She’s being ridiculous. He knows it.

It’s when she sets the recorder down that she notices a second mug of coffee already on the table. He’d ordered for her. Karen blinks rapidly, heart hammering against her breastbone as a gently confounded smile tugs at her lips. This feels different than Jessica Jones stealing Matt’s glass for her. This mug is _hers_.

“Thanks,” she breathes, taking it in both hands. Still hot, too. The heat against her palms is an anchor, soothing her nerves a hairsbreadth.

Frank responds with a soft sound from the back of his throat and a vague gesture of his mug towards hers when she takes her first sip. The coffee is just shy of too hot, acidic notes dancing on the edges of her tongue, earthy and herbal at the back of her throat.

“So,” he starts, lowering his mug. When Karen looks up at him, his head bobs and weaves slightly, the gentle back and forth reverberating down through his shoulders as he leans forward on his elbows. His eyes are narrowed, crow’s feet gathered at the corners. A telegraphed smile. “You had more questions?”

“Mmh,” Karen lies. She sets her coffee down and reaches for the recorder. _Kill time, Karen_. “Do you consent to being recorded?”

“I do.” Frank nods, once, his index finger easing up and down the handle of his mug. He doesn’t roll his eyes, but Karen thinks it might be a close thing.

Karen nods in return. Opens her notebook. Clicks her pen. “So I, uh, have to ask,” (no she doesn’t) “what’s coming down the line for you?” Karen drags her gaze from a fresh page of her notebook, meets Frank’s eyes. They’re dark, focused, a deep rift in his brow that only gets deeper when she clarifies, “You know. If you’re working on new music, or…” _Or if you told anybody I drunk-dialed you._

Frank just stares at her. He’s wearing his jacket, and Karen can barely see the outline of the pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket. He adjusts in his seat, weaves his fingers together with his elbows still planted on the formica tabletop. “What’s Leatherneck up to next, huh?” The gentle amusement at the edges of Frank’s eyes spreads throughout his face, the silent laughter unmistakable, now. Goddammit.

He’s giving her shit. Karen rolls her eyes. (Even if she deserves it. She refuses to admit that they’re here for any other reason than a planned follow-up. She’ll go down with the cover-up.) “Yeah,” she breathes, and presses her fingertips to the lip of her mug, holding his gaze. “What’s next for you?”

Frank’s response is put on hold by approaching footsteps. His gaze diverts, eyes sliding past Karen’s shoulder. She turns, watches the waitress – armed with a pot of coffee – step up to their booth.

“Well, welcome back,” she says, directed at Karen as she refills Frank’s coffee.

“Thank you,” Frank murmurs. She tops Karen off as well. The scent of arabica soothes the tension in her temples.

“Can we get ya anything to eat this time?” their waitress asks. “We’ve got –“

Frank silences her by passing her his plastic menu. Karen hadn’t even noticed he’d had one. (Maybe she’s more hungover than she’d thought. She’s been mainlining water and Advil since she was jolted awake by a nightmare at three in the morning, accepting a shit night’s sleep as a foregone conclusion.) “Just three eggs, over easy, some bacon, sourdough toast, yeah?”

Any eyebrow quirk Karen would treat Frank to for _sourdough toast_ is usurped by a pang of hunger so intense she almost sways with it. Sure, she’d had leftover takeout (fried rice, refried in her sole pan – the one with the scorched, sticky teflon after she’d burnt chicken in it her first time using it) to mop up the rest of the whiskey in her stomach when she’d gotten home, but. There’s something about the promise of grease and fat and _diner bacon_ that makes her hangover rear its ugly head with a vengeance.

“You got it,” the waitress says to Frank, jotting down his order on her pad. She looks to Karen, expectant. “And for you, hon?”

She hasn’t looked at a menu – thinks her eyes might swim if she tried. She’s so bowed over with sudden hunger, realizing with an exasperated huff that she’d skipped breakfast. “Uh, two eggs, bacon, and some orange juice?” Vitamin C’s good, right?

Their waitress – Jean, her name tag reads – nods. “How do you want those eggs?”

“Over hard, please,” Karen replies. That’d been how her mom did them – said she never knew if they were fully cooked, otherwise. Her dad had been more experimental, perfecting eggs in a basket for Saturday morning breakfasts, while their mom slept in and read the paper.

Their waitress leaves with a “be right out for you,” and it dawns on Karen that she’s going to have to split a bill with Frank Castle. She wants to bury her head in her hands, maybe crawl back into bed and do a hard reset on the last twenty-four hours.

Instead, she manages her eyebrow raise after all, asks “Sourdough?” as Jean walks away to put in their order.

Frank’s brow furrows. “It’s good bread,” he says, gruff.

The corner of her mouth curls up. “Pretty hipster of you,” she says.

He and Kathy had gone on a bit about the hipster phenomena, during their practice. The general distaste Leatherneck has for the occasional visitors to The Safehouse’s space being that these Brooklyn transplants are more than willing to talk the talk – dress the part, attend shows – but when it comes to showing up for a Food Not Bombs meeting, they can’t be fucked.

Frank scoffs, however. “Yeah, I’m flirting with the idea of going full man-bun,” he returns.

His shave is fresh, buzzed close enough that Karen can see the way his scar pulls, slightly, at the skin of his temple. She meets his eyes over her coffee, raised to her lips. “It’d be a good look for you,” she says, before taking a drink.

He laughs at that, a quiet back-of-the-throat chuckle that makes heat rush the nape of Karen’s neck. She’s grateful to have worn her hair down, tries to tell the warmth in her middle to go away, that she’s working. (Or that’s the story she’s running with, at least. _Fuck_.)

She takes another long pull from her coffee, letting the caffeine work its way through the tight, sore muscles in her head before asking, again, “So then, what’s next for you, Frank?”

“Mm,” Frank hums, lowering his mug. He fidgets, his rhythmic, unconscious rocking familiar to her, now. “Got that tour coming up in August. Hit upstate ‘fore winter.”

Karen nods, remembering. Leatherneck had been talking about it during dinner the other night.

Frank continues, “Lieberman wants to ask Defenders along.”

Karen blinks in surprise. “Really?” The question slips out before she can hold it back, reword it into something that doesn’t smack of _well shit, I got the feeling that you and The Defenders did different things._

He nods once, twice. “Yeah,” he says, hands coming together. His left thumb and forefinger stroke across the back of his right hand as he sways. “Be good for ‘em, get a taste of it on a short run. We’re thinking two weeks.” He traces a circle in the air with one finger. “Quick loop ‘round the tri-state.”

“So what,” Karen starts, leaning forward in interest, “like an educational exercise?”

Frank chuckles again. “That might burn Red’s ass.”

“Red?” Karen tilts her head, pausing before lifting her coffee to her mouth.

He clucks, smacks his lips together. Bobs his head before elaborating in typical, one-word fashion: “Murdock.”

No wonder Matt had gotten pointy-faced at the mention of Frank Castle. Karen exhales audibly, not quite laughing. There’s tension there, where Matt and Frank are concerned. If Karen had to guess, Matt can’t navigate Frank’s speech too well. (She’d made a point of it in her profile, to detail just how much Frank communicates with his body. She wonders if either of them are aware of how much is being lost in translation between them.)

“Think Danny might cream his pants, though,” she adds, before thinking better of it. “He seems pretty impressed with you.”

Something stalls in Frank’s expression, like he’s trying to place the name. At first, Karen’s eyebrows crawl up her forehead in surprise. But then it clicks. Of _course_ Frank doesn’t know who Danny fucking Rand is. Why would he?

“The rich kid?” Frank breathes, eyes going a bit crooked. He telegraphs clearly: _the fuck?_

“That’d be the one,” Karen confirms, unable to keep from grinning. She’s landed on something that actually seems to take Frank by surprise. And annoy him a little.

“Ah, for Chrissakes,” he mutters, eyes rolling as he leans back in the booth. Karen bites her tongue to keep from laughing.

“Three eggs over easy?” a new voice calls, sliding into the space between Frank’s exasperation and Karen’s reply. She and Frank both look up. One of the kitchen staff has arrived with their food. Jean’s behind him, at another table. Karen nods toward Frank, and their food is distributed between them.

A couple minutes pass in amicable silence as they both tuck in. Karen has to swallow back a moan when she takes her first bite of delicious, greasy bacon. She should’ve ordered more.

When she resurfaces – more than half her bacon gone and almost all of her eggs – she asks, “This is your first tour in a while, right?”

Frank glances up from his own brunch. He nods. “Mhm.” Another swallow of coffee before he continues, “We spent most of last year on the road, working voter registration at the shows. We were in D.C. in January, but. Took some down time, after all a’ that.”

Karen sighs. She’d spent January 20th at the Women’s March in Manhattan. Her mom made her one of the hats. It hadn’t felt as impactful as she’d hoped. Especially not seven months out and no organizing victories after the fact.

She’s stalling. He’s eating his eggs. But still, a question forms, taking root in the back of her mind. Karen downs a sip of coffee to prolong the quiet, give the question a chance to gestate through the fog of her hangover.

Almost a full minute passes, before she lowers her coffee and asks, “Is that an intentionally apolitical choice? Going on tour with a band like The Defenders?”

Frank swallows. The diner is starting to bustle around them, lunch rush kicking in. Jean flits past with a pot of coffee between helping other customers. “Thank you, ma’am,” Frank says as she refreshes his cup, steadfastly polite.

With another unconscious bob of the head, sway in his shoulders, Frank lifts his coffee but doesn’t drink yet. His elbows are planted on the table, slightly swollen knuckles plainly within Karen’s eye-line. Frank’s left his food, for now, instead seizing Karen’s question between his teeth, chewing on an answer.

“That what you think?” he asks. The furrow in his brow is carved deep. Measuring her. Karen’s back straightens unconsciously.

“I –“ Karen tilts her head.

There’s something withheld in Frank’s expression, almost patient. Like he’s waiting.

Karen touches her mouth, nips momentarily at a fingernail – a bad habit that crops up every once in a while. Self awareness crawls in under the dark cover of Frank’s scrutiny. Her fingertips taste like her notebook paper.

Leatherneck and The Defenders. Of course it’s political. Because the personal is political. It’s Frank Castle and his brain dotted with landmines that eliminate entire words. It’s Matt Murdock anchoring himself in one spot onstage.

It’s Karen, too. Karen and her initial assumption that Matt’s glasses must be some sort of _fashion statement._

It’s that they’re both frontmen, even if everything she’s been told about what makes a good frontman – what makes a performer talented, _magnetic_ – says otherwise.

Karen exhales through her fingers. “N-no,” she murmurs. She shakes her head, closing her eyes as she does. When they open again, her hair has fallen into her face. She tucks a lock behind her ear. “At least. Not anymore.”

“Hnh,” Frank hums, forking another bite of eggs and bacon into his mouth. He taps a staccato rhythm on the edge of the table with his free hand. “Got there all on your own, huh?” Tight around his eyes. Upward tilt to the corners of his mouth, presently refusing to break into a real goddamn smile.

Karen huffs, glancing away to roll her eyes. Her hands leave her face, lowering to the tabletop. _Dick._  When she looks back over at him, she can feel her face do something ridiculous – an expression caught between chagrin and amusement: eyebrows raised, mouth twisting into an unbidden smile that doesn’t show any teeth. “You set me up for that.”

Frank’s face scrunches, lines appearing around his wide-set nose, his narrowed eyes. Then he _grins_ , a flash of teeth and gums and deep lines cracking his expression open when he stabs his fork into his food, drags his knife against the plate. “You set yourself up for that.”

He’s not wrong. But Karen isn’t quite ready to concede that fact.

“You think Matt knows you plan on radicalizing him?” Karen asks, memory circling back towards Matt’s incredulous expression at the mention of Frank’s name. The curl of Matt’s lip is burned into her memory. His mouth is more expressive than most people’s entire faces (present company excluded, of course).

“Red can handle it,” Frank says around a mouthful of food, matter-of-fact. Momentarily, Karen wants to ask about that, about Frank’s nickname for Matt. But then, it’s obvious: his shock of auburn hair, his red glasses. The fact that it probably irritates Matt that Frank can’t be bothered to use his real name.

Maybe it should give Karen pause that she already knows Frank well enough to cotton to the fact that Frank’s making intentional choices to get Matt riled up. That his gruff exterior is nearly equal parts genuine and put-on, designed to get under the skin of anyone who might look too close.

It doesn’t.

“So, I was talking to Claire last night,” Karen starts, setting her fork and knife down across her plate, her food finished. (She really should have ordered more, she thinks, eyes sliding unconsciously to Frank’s stack of toast.) Frank looks up at her, waiting for the second half of the sentence. “She says you’ve known each other a long time. Over ten years?”

Frank nods several times, but it feels detached, compulsive. His shoulders sway as he scoops up the last of his eggs on his fork. He chews his food, swallows, throat bobbing as he does. It’s the first time Karen notices the jut of his Adam’s apple. Another plane of sharp lines. His eyes are raised but unfocused. She gets the sense that he’s looking through her again, and has to resist the urge to lean in, get his full attention back.  

“Yeah,” he says, his voice as untethered as his gaze. He doesn’t eat, doesn’t do so much as continue to divvy up his food.

When Karen was a teenager and someone would bring up something she didn’t want to discuss – a past exam, a boy, an upcoming school function – at the dinner table, she would busy herself with cutting her food into impossibly small pieces.

Frank, meanwhile, doesn’t even stir. Fork prongs pressed dead center into the middle of the plate. The scratch of metal on ceramic barely audible. His index finger rubbing the handle.

“Can I ask how you met?” Karen presses. He seems to have no intention of elaborating on his own. She decides to take the risk, to push him just a little, thinks that maybe she’s earned enough of his trust to get him to bare this truth for her.

Frank looks down, eyes landing on the middle of the table and staying there.

Karen stares at him a beat. He says nothing. She follows the shifting line of his shoulders, bites the inside of her lip. Swallows a sigh. She’d thought they were out of the woods but every new bend in the path only offers more trees. She wants to kick the leg of the table, more mad at herself for being overconfident than she is at Frank.

But when she looks back up from her plate, Frank’s face is – not angry. Not even upset, exactly. More lost in thought, jaw ticcing. Karen’s instincts tell her to be patient. She pops the last scrap of bacon on her plate into her mouth, chews, and waits.

It pays off. Frank speaks to his plate.“Claire’s an EMT.”

Karen nods, encouraging, but stays quiet.

He frowns a little deeper, thoughtful. “Yeah,” he confirms. His head sways. Almost a nod, but Karen realizes it’s not just his head moving, but his full body rocking forward and then back in agreement.

She finds herself nodding in reply, beginning to pull pieces of the narrative together. “So,” Karen starts, reaching out with a question. Trying to lead him out of the woods and back to the table. “You met before you started working at The Chaste?”

Frank looks straight at her then. He exhales audibly through his nose, right hand pulling at the fingers of his left, mostly empty plate and the remainder of his coffee abandoned for the moment. When he nods, it’s stilted, one sharp jerk of the head. Karen takes a deep breath, tries and fails not to let the sudden low hum of anxiety in Frank’s demeanor echo in her own gut.

“After rehab, I. I didn’t.” He swallows, seems like he’s looking for words. Karen tenses, wonders if she should slide her notebook over. But he’s calm and he hasn’t asked. He’s trying to communicate across a different breed of wordlessness. “I didn’t have anywhere to be.”

Karen’s brow furrows. She doesn’t know what that means.

“I guess, in the hospital, I didn’t think about what was gonna happen next. What I was gonna do, when it was over. When they cut me loose, I just. Wandered, for a while, y’know.”

Karen’s still staring at him. She’s missing something. Her mind scrambles to follow the cookie crumb trail he leaves her. Knows his parents died, before he got shot. His mother while he was still a teenager. But… surely Frank had a home, after the death of his father?

Karen knows that there are people in the military that don’t fit the All-American vision of the soldier who’s got a wife and kids waiting for him on shore leave – knows that Frank certainly wasn’t that. She knows it just as much as she knows that there are people who don’t _like_ to go home between deployments but still have to go _somewhere_.

Frank glances up at her. His tongue darts out over the corner of his upper lip. “Didn’t do so well, in the shelters. Spent most my time on the street. Either way, shit happens. I don’t –” He whets his lips again, switches up the grip his hands have on each other. “Don’t. Remember the first time Claire an’ I met, but uh. She was doing her job. Patched me up, a few times. More’n a few.”

Karen blinks. This feels like it should have come up much, much earlier. “You… you were homeless?”

He makes an affirmative sound, between a hum and a grunt. Weaves his fingers together, flexes his hands. His knuckles flash white. “Was carted into the ER, more than once. Don’t – remember. The first time, but. It got so we recognized each other. She started talking to me.” Frank swallows, hands clenching and unclenching. “Claire’s a good woman.”

“What –” Karen starts, but stops short. Clears her throat. The next question slips out before Karen can shape it fully. “You got hurt a lot?”

Frank huffs a dry almost-laugh that Karen can’t help but echo a beat later. Yeah, that was. Kind of a silly question, but. _The ER?_

“Claire woulda made a hell of a corpsman.” Frank’s shrug is lopsided, stiff. There’s discomfort, the precise nature of which Karen can’t pin down. Something more complicated than embarrassment. “But some shit…” He gives another jerk of his shoulder, looks away. Makes a smacking noise with his lips. The unspoken _some shit needs a doctor_ sends a blast of cold worry down Karen’s spine. Frank continues, “‘Sides, ER’ll get you a hot meal and a rack for the night.”

And there it is again. The question waves like a flag in the wind; Karen doesn’t know if it’s a decoy or warning. Her need to _know_ , to understand, barrels through her. “But you had somewhere to go, right? You couldn’t just not have a permanent address.” The front door to her childhood home creaks open in her mind. The second hinge was always squeaky. When she’d get home, late, on her breaks from school, she always had to sneak in through the back because of that door. It’d wake up the whole house. “Your parents’ house… you never went back?”

Everyone always has to have a home, right? Even if it’s an empty farmhouse in Vermont.

Frank’s face is completely shuttered. Silverware, food, coffee all sit in front of him. He shakes his head, once. “Parents rented our house, never owned.”

She sucks in a breath and hopes it isn’t too loud. When she thinks about not having roots somewhere, _anywhere_ , a hybrid between surprise and grief grips her by the throat with two cold hands. Even if she’d rather never set foot inside her childhood home again, she can’t imagine not having that tether. An internal compass always aiming North.

Take that away and suddenly Karen feels afraid. She can see the path that leads to Frank’s homelessness lay itself at her feet. A stinging wind blows down it. “Oh,” she says.

“Yeah. Anyway. Claire and I got to talkin’, she found out I was a vet. Suggested I get some help.” He wraps one hand around his mug, but doesn’t lift it to drink. “I listened. Eventually.” His thumb taps the handle. “Claire’s right about most things. ‘S why I figure Red can’t be a total douchebag.”

Karen’s mouth twitches, but the smile stays buried.

“Struck out with the V.A., but uh. Guy from my unit, works with vets at this nonprofit, _Second Lives_.” Karen makes a note of it reflexively, her pen scratching at the page absently while Frank continues, “‘S where I met Rachel.”

Karen nods, remembering. “She’d mentioned you were both… not doing great, when you first met.” _Fucked up attracts fucked up._

Frank lifts his coffee then, clucks once before taking a sip. Sucks his teeth, after. “She was working the front desk.” A sardonic smile just barely tugs at his cheek, the corner of his lip. “Quite the welcome wagon, y’know. She ain’t exactly friendly.”

Karen barely catches her scoff. She might not know him _that_ well, but she’s disinclined to believe a street-hardened Frank was a delight either. The smile he’d tried for twitches, momentary, at the corners of her mouth as she murmurs, “Imagine that.”

Frank’s mouth turns deliberately down at the corners, his eyes still crinkled. He’s forcing back a smile. The outline of him seems to waver with the effort. “We got along.”

Karen does laugh, at that. It’s soft around the edges – she’s trying to imagine Frank and Rachel, a decade younger, sizing each other up in a front office somewhere. The wariness and the recognition. It doesn’t take a lot of time spent with Leatherneck to look between them and sense the common ground. Ultimately, in their small, motley crew of alienated citizens, Frank and Rachel seem the most similar.

The most quiet, too. There’s something intense and oddly sweet about that, envisioning the circles Karen guesses they would have walked around one another before developing anything like the trust they now share. Especially in whatever state Frank had been in, walking in off the street.

 _Because that’s where he lived. On the street._ Karen bites her lip. She’s still trying to wrap her mind around it.

When she looks at him – meticulously shaved head, fading bruises, field jacket wearing slightly at the shoulders, but overall well-kept – she tries to unravel him. There’s an intentionally nondescript quality to the way Frank dresses himself. Dark colors. Sticks mostly to blacks and charcoal grays, the occasional deep green, dark wash denim. No logos grace his clothing, not even a patch or pin on his jacket. His clothes don’t ever look _new_ , but they aren’t in disrepair either.

But she begins to see it. His eyes grow warier in her imagination, bruises more vivid, clothes more pronouncedly broken in. The Frank in her mind shifts, recalls the Frank she sees onstage: barely contained rage, a sense of _warning_. A reaction, a reminder. Of what, she’s not exactly sure. But everything in Frank feels like a consequence, both realized and promised.

Karen takes a deep breath, shifting her weight as she does. Frank watches her all the while. She can’t read the look in his eyes. “I –” she aborts the sentence quickly. Clicks her pen, retracting the tip. Sets it down, closes her notebook over it. “Thank you,” she says instead, her voice barely audible.

He hears her, though. Just like she knew he would. (He’s Frank Castle. ‘Observant’ is maybe inadequate to describe him. The lawyer, the one that she didn’t like but her parents did, had said something about her _experience_. That she was now living with the ‘stress of the _hyper-vigilant_.’ When she looks at Frank, something clicks, quietly, into place.)

Frank’s brow furrows at her gratitude. The frown reaches down into his cheeks, his mouth. “Huh,” he grunts. He doesn’t ask the question out loud, but Karen answers it regardless.

“For telling me,” she says, meeting his confusion with a steady look of her own. This is a different kind of baring of one’s life than their last conversation in this diner. Then, Frank had described being shot with cold, gruesome, _detached_ detail. This had taken something else. There’s a deeper hurt here; recognition rears up in Karen, following Frank’s echo over the expanse of her own memory. “I – I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like.”

“Huh,” Frank repeats, his expression recalculating. The questioning frown eases from his mouth into something tighter, more contained. His eyes thin in focus. He’s digesting her words, her tone. The look in her eyes. Karen makes sure to hold the gravity in her face until he’s processed it.

He keeps his eyes locked on hers a few more long seconds before nodding, just barely. The suggestion of a movement. “Okay,” he says, voice pitched low over the table. 

It’s then, of course, that Jean returns to their table. Her smile is genuine for them – earned, Karen thinks, by the way that Frank drops out of whatever he’s doing to afford her equal consideration, always says _please_ and _thank you_ (rarely even so little as a _thanks_ , but _thank you_ , full stop). “Can I get you folks anything else? More coffee, slice of pie?”

Frank looks at Karen in the same moment she looks to him. The second their eyes meet, the same question held in the gentle quirk of Frank’s eyebrows as her uneven smile, Karen feels something warm (embarrassment, probably) swirl in her chest, gather in her cheeks. She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and drops his gaze first.

She shakes her head up at the waitress. “Uh, no,” she breathes, pauses, before adding, “thank you.”

The waitress nods and makes her way behind the counter and then into the back of the diner, radio music swelling and quieting again when the door to the kitchen swings open.

Karen’s eyes dart again to Frank’s toast. There are a couple small, single use containers of strawberry jam on the plate too, untouched. She doesn’t ask.

Frank slides the plate across the table towards her without a word.

 

* * *

 

Trish wants her to do a feature on women in the New York scene. Karen latches onto it, because it gives her something else to focus on. Something that’s not _Frank Castle_. Something outside her apartment, where the photos she’d taken of Frank – for Ellison to choose from, to accompany the profile – are currently developing in her bathtub. (Without access to a proper darkroom, Karen’s had to resort to using her bathroom. Which is fine, aside from the fact that she has to schedule her showers around development processes. And bathing under a red light bulb is creepy as shit.) 

It’s just her luck, really, that Arsenic and Old Lace are opening for The _fucking_ Defenders, at The _fucking_ Chaste. The piece can’t _not_ feature them – the band is all women: Nico Minoru, Karolina Dean, Molly Hernandez, and Gert Yorkes. All in their mid-twenties and all conspicuously talented; they’ve also been making waves by writing and playing almost entirely LGBT-focused music ever since Dean and Minoru announced last fall that they were seeing each other.

Which is how Karen, armed with her camera, recording equipment, and notebook, ends up at The Chaste three days later.

She sees Frank before he sees her. Karen’s early again, though not as early as the last time she covered a show at The Chaste. He’s in the middle of running soundcheck with Arsenic and Old Lace, his back to her as Gert shouts for more monitor in her bass – bright green, painted intricately to look like the body is made of scales.   

Arsenic and Old Lace is an eclectic mix. Gert out front – sporting deep violet hair and a denim jacket decked out in enamel pins – looks like she should be wandering around campus at Pratt, while Molly Hernandez’s pink overalls and pastel-toned drum kit recall the hazy indie pop Karen grew up on.

Then there’s Karolina Dean and Nico Minoru. The former has shimmering, long, platinum blonde hair, everything about her technically perfect, from the way she holds her guitar – which has a _holographic_ body, Karen notices when the light shifts – to the expensive-looking linen romper she wears, showcasing her long legs. Everything about her is _vibrant_ , an internal brightness radiating outward. Minoru is her inverse: black hair swept up in an elaborate series of knots; layered necklaces with their various charms and stones reaching from her neck down the middle of her sternum; a dark velvet dress that Karen thinks might have a purple or cobalt sheen, depending on the light. And a black guitar, the body emblazoned with a bumper sticker that announces _Reading leads to witchcraft and lesbianism._  

“You here for Frank?” Claire Temple asks, interrupting Karen’s study of the band. She’s perched at the bar, sketching almost absently in her notebook. She’d meant to be taking notes. Instead, a drawing of Gert Yorkes looks up at her. The back of a familiar head, too; focus put into detailing the familiar texture and wrinkle in the collar of his jacket.

Karen startles at Claire’s question, her hand flying over Frank’s shadow on the bottom of her page. “What?” she asks, breathless. The tips of her ears heat. Her head tilts, hair falling over them.

It’s a futile effort. Karen’s flush only intensifies, reaching down the back of her neck when Claire speaks again. “Frank,” she says. “They should be finishing up soon.”

Karen’s front teeth come down hard on her lower lip. “Uh, no, actually,” she says, cheeks inescapably pink, now. She swallows and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear with the hand that isn’t guarding her sketch. “I’m, uh, doing a feature on women in the local scene for Trish. So –” she indicates the stage with a flick of her pen.

Claire’s gaze follows the gesture. “Good choice,” she says, and offers Karen a smile. She takes it with a note of surprise. She didn’t think Claire particularly liked her. “You want a drink?”

God, she does, but – her eyes slide back over to Frank, now bent over the soundboard in concentration. He’s in three-quarters profile. Karen can see the deep furrow of his brow; the two lines that appear at the start of each eyebrow, framing the wide bridge of his nose. His jacket is unzipped, a nod to the late July heat. His t-shirt underneath is black and Karen can see, from the way he’s stooped to inspect the board, where the chain with his dog tags and his mother’s ring press against the cotton.

“No, thank you,” Karen replies, looking back to Claire.

“You change your mind, you let me know, okay?” Claire says before dropping out of view. She returns after the sound of a fridge opening and closing. She’s placing prepped lemon and lime wedges into their proper homes.

“Will do,” Karen breathes, chewing her lower lip again. Claire’s not looking at her anymore and Karen wants to keep it that way. She flips to a fresh page in her notebook and sets to taking actual notes about Arsenic and Old Lace’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink appearance.

Claire was right – it’s not long after that Arsenic and Old Lace departs the stage and the house music gets just a little bit louder. The bar fills rapidly. Karen slings her bag over one shoulder, making room for the person who slides up beside her.

“Hey stranger,” Claire calls in greeting. Karen looks up. Claire’s expression is one of quiet delight. It makes her high cheekbones glow, uneven dimples appear in her cheeks (the one on the left higher than the one on the right). Her eyes are rich and brown, warmth gathering at their corners. She sets down the glass she’s cleaning and places her hands on the bar to lean forward and catch Matt Murdock’s chin with her fingers, kiss him hello. His hand – the one not gripping his cane – lays over Claire’s atop the bar. It’s intimate, personal, and Karen looks away, casts her focus over the noise of the crowd, willing the din to swallow Matt’s hello to Claire. She strains to hear the house music (Sleater-Kinney, she’s pretty sure).

“Say hi to Karen,” Claire says. The sound of her name dials Karen’s attention back into tight focus. “On your right.”

Matt releases a chuckle of sorts, tilts his head toward her. His movements, Karen notices again, are rote, precise. Instead of moving his whole frame to greet her, Matt inclines his head, leading with his ear. Which makes sense, Karen supposes. Still, Karen finds the rhythm of his movements distracting, almost bird-like.

“Hello Miss Page,” Matt Murdock says, his position shifting again so he can offer her a smile.

He’s cute, really, in a deliberately charming kind of way. Big dimples, coppery scruff dusting the lower half of his face, matched to his tousled crop of hair. Those red glasses. The difference being here, tonight, instead of a suit (like the last time Karen had seen him), he’s wearing dark wash jeans, cuffed to expose his ankles, and an old muted green t-shirt, motheaten near the collar.  

It’s a shame Karen can’t quite shake the sound of Matt’s incredulous voice spitting out _Frank Castle?_

“Hey,” Karen says, giving him a hello nod despite her best efforts to suppress it. She bites her lip, runs her fingers through her hair. “Are you looking forward to the show tonight?” _Great job, Karen, what a completely normal non-awkward thing to ask the guy who’s headlining_.

Matt’s gracious enough to laugh good-naturedly when he replies. “Uh, yeah, actually,” he says, as Claire taps his hand and offers him a beer. German, Karen notices. “I’d like to think we’re finally getting the hang of it.” There’s a crack of self-deprecation that spiderwebs through his voice. He pivots. “Are you covering the show?” 

She nods unconsciously. “Uh, yeah. We’re running a feature on local female musicians, so.” She shrugs, smacks her lips.

Before she can continue, Matt picks up the thread. “Arsenic and Old Lace,” he finishes, nodding himself. He tilts his beer towards her in salute before taking a drink. “Makes sense.”

“Gert’ll be pleased,” Claire adds, returning from making drinks at another well behind the bar and sliding a glass towards Karen. “It’s water. You’ve been here for like an hour. It’s ninety degrees out.” She points to the glass of water and Karen can see the condensation forming from the ice, droplets sliding down from the lip to the base of the glass and gathering on the wood of the bar. Claire’s expression has shifted again; gone is the wide and fond smile she’d had for Matt. Now she wears an expression which brooks no argument, her mouth in a stern line. “Drink.”

Feeling schooled, her flush brightening in her cheeks – due as much to her renewed appreciation of how goddamn _hot_ it is in here, as her heightened self-awareness – Karen takes a long swig. Claire is right, of course; Karen knows as soon as the cold water hits her tongue. She feels worlds better when she sets down the glass, a third lighter than it had been before.  

But the mini lecture on hydration doesn’t stop the wheels of Karen’s mind from spinning. She looks back at Claire. “Is there anyone you don’t know?” she asks, amused and more than a little intimidated.

“I work the night shift,” Claire says with a shrug. “We do a lot of music and more often than not, someone in the crowd does something stupid, and someone gets hurt.”

Karen nods. A small smile alights on her face. She loves putting together puzzles as the pieces reveal themselves. The bone-deep satisfaction that rushes through her when she starts to string together the narrative is a high in its own right. “Perks of keeping an EMT on payroll,” she says, tilting her glass towards Claire.

The other woman smirks back. There’s a thinness there, an edge. A commiserative expression shot through with bitterness. Yeah, Karen’s had a boss or two like that. “Perks,” Claire echoes, lifting her own glass of water she’s been nursing behind the bar towards Karen.

“So, Karen,” Matt starts, folding his cane and setting it on the bar. He lays his forearm against the wood and re-angles himself, to face her a little more head-on. “How –”

It’s then that they’re interrupted by a loud and unfortunately familiar shout. “Karen!” Danny Rand cries, approaching fast behind Matt’s shoulder. His blonde curls are more wild than usual, appearing tacky with grease. Karen wonders if he hasn’t showered purely to fit in among the punk crowd. He’s wearing expensive looking linen-shorts and TOMS, paired with a hibiscus flower printed cotton tank-top.

“And Matt!” Danny finishes, laying one arm over each of their shoulders. It pulls them all in tight and tugs Karen off balance. Her body sways into Danny’s. He smells earthy and dank. “My favorite people,” he concludes, giving their shoulders a squeeze before finally releasing them. 

Karen hasn’t smoked in months, and the pungent reek of weed that clings to Danny is enough to make her nostrils flare.

Matt’s chuckling as they slip back into their respective places – still packed tight thanks to Danny’s self-insertion into the conversation. “Hey, Danny.”

“Matt,” Danny says, shifting; his back turns towards Karen. “The craziest of crazies just happened. Colleen and I were outside, you know?”

“Yeah, buddy, I know,” Matt placates. Karen can hear the laughter in his voice.

Danny’s curls bounce with the enthusiasm he wheels on Matt. “Well, so, while we were smoking, and these two kids came up to us – they were really cool, one had a big animal tattoo, like maybe a wolf? But anyway, they _knew me_.”

Karen has to bite back a laugh. It doesn’t quite work. Instead, she makes a strangled noise, laughter turning into a cough, all tangled up in the back of her throat. She attempts to cover it by taking a sip of water. Danny, thankfully, doesn’t appear to notice. However, thanks to the height Matt has on Danny, Karen can see Matt’s head swivel just so at the sound. She catches his smile jerk and twist, dimple in his cheek deepening as he suppresses his own amusement. She flushes.

“Well, I mean,” Danny corrects, “they knew _us_! Our band! They said they were here to see us! Matt, we have fans! And they were _so cool_. They were like, ‘hey, you’re in The Defenders!’ and I was like, ‘wow, yeah I am!’ They’re _totally stoked_ we’re going on tour, man.”

“Wow, sounds like it,” Claire interjects, deadpan. She pushes two glasses of water across the bar. “Water, for you both.” She doesn’t give them the same speech she gave Karen, but Matt and Danny oblige her regardless. Danny gulps down his glass and Matt trades his beer for the water to nurse.

Danny’s shock at the existence of Defenders fans – though hilarious and a potential avenue for mockery that Karen recognizes – sharpens Karen’s interest. The journalist in her seizes onto the nugget of real information Danny dropped by way of his story.

“You guys are going on tour?” Either it means they’ve said yes to Leatherneck’s offer or they’re planning their own. Karen surreptitiously opens her notebook with the tip of her pen.

“That we are,” a voice interjects from behind Karen. Danny and Karen turn in unison. Jessica Jones and Trish have appeared behind her. Jessica raises an eyebrow, her eyes tracking from Karen’s face down to the open notebook on the bar. “What’s it to you?”

But before Karen can formulate an answer, Danny barrels forward in the conversation. “We’re going on tour with _Leatherneck!”_ Danny cries, and he’s so goddamn excited Karen has to bite back another smile despite herself. He tilts his head, regarding Karen with wide, red-rimmed eyes and dilated pupils. “You _have_ to come and cover it. It would be perfect. We need a good photographer.”

Karen blanches, the smile chased from her face.

“Kid,” Jessica starts, warning writ through the single syllable. “Don’t –”

But Trish leans forward, brow folded in her _I’m planning something_ expression. “No, hold on,” she says, placing her hand on Jessica’s elbow. “Danny might be onto something, here. Live dispatches from the tour for _AltTrish_. It would build buzz for you all. Karen already has a working relationship with Leatherneck.” Trish smiles before adding, presumably for Karen’s benefit, “And it’d give you good experience.” 

“This is amazing, Karen,” Danny says, voice dropping, low and earnest. He’s emphatic, reaching out to touch Karen’s hand. She doesn’t have the chance to pull away before he says, “This is the will of the universe.” Jessica’s scoff is echoed by Claire and Matt, but Danny seems oblivious. He holds Karen’s gaze, but releases her hand.

Karen laughs once, brittle. “I’m assuming my opinion doesn’t matter in this?”

Trish’s smile melts into a smirk. It’s the look she gets when she’s made a decision, one she thinks is helpful and correct – even if the people around her aren’t too pleased. It’s a look Karen has seen her shoot interviewees in the recording booth. She doesn’t like being on the receiving end of it.

“Nope,” her boss says, smugly popping the ‘p’. “I’ll email you the details in the morning.”

Karen opens and closes her mouth. With a will of its own, her gaze slides down the length of the room, towards the stage. There’s motion there: the ladies of Arsenic and Old Lace are re-adjusting pedalboards, ensuring their audio lines won’t trip them when they move around onstage. Her eyes land on Frank, talking with Gert. There’s a deep frown on his face – not anger or disappointment, but confusion that makes his mouth hang open, his brow creased and eyes narrowed, lines widening across his face. Gert gesticulates wildly. 

“I, uh, should go set up,” Karen says, looking back at the small crowd that now surrounds her. She wraps one hand around the strap of her bag and slides off her stool, stepping forward. Her heels click on the floor.

Trish blinks, as if she’d forgotten Karen is here to _work_. “Of course,” she replies, moving aside to give Karen an exit path.

Karen swallows, making her escape. She remembers her manners at the last second, though, and says, “Thanks. Good to see you all.”

As she weaves her way through the crowd, Karen attempts to steel herself. _Tour_. The Defenders want her to go on tour with them. With _Leatherneck_. She almost laughs, but it’s more a hysterical tremor in her throat, and she clamps down on the urge just before she throws her head back. She’s been trying to _not_ fixate on Leatherneck, since her last lunch with Frank. Since she’d called him, _drunk_ , seeking – something. Even now, looking back, Karen still doesn’t know.

But it doesn’t work. The hysteria nearly boils over into full panic as she reaches the front of the crowd. Karen has to take a series of deep breaths, trying to remember how the therapist had instructed her to breathe in through her nose for six seconds and then out through her mouth for another six. She never quite managed it then. Still can’t now.

Instead, she decides it’s better to remind herself she has a job to do. She doesn’t have time to panic. Not right now, because Arsenic and Old Lace are turning on their instruments, the hum of guitar feedback filling the cozy bar. _Get it together, Page._

She turns on her recorder; leaves it in the small pocket of her camera bag. Switches the notebook and pen in her hands for her camera. Lens cap going into the pocket with the recorder. Frank has vanished from the stage. This is Arsenic and Old Lace’s territory now.

Minoru’s guitar begins to growl out a slow, steady riff. It’s complemented by Dean’s rhythm guitar – she plays with precision, weaving in an almost alien sound with steel strings. When Karen expects Gert to lean into her mic, she’s taken by surprise. Hernandez speaks instead, into a mic affixed to her drum kit. When she starts talking, her words are angry, low and _present_. Minoru and Dean’s strings seeming to hold the air open, make room for her voice:

“Animals are subjected to experiments that include everything from infecting them with diseases, poisoning, burning their skin, causing brain damage and planting electrodes in their brains. Maiming blinding and other painful, invasive procedures. Many if not most animals die before the end of the study. Do you really think animal torture is the only path to medical progress?”

Minoru bends over the neck of her guitar, sound twisting into something more jagged. Karen lines up the shot, stooping low to catch how the woman tilts her guitar as she augments the sound. It becomes incrementally angrier. Minoru is expressionless as she does it – her dark lipstick-lined mouth holding in a small, hard line. 

Dean feeds off that anger, strumming bright chords – a counterpoint to the low tones wrought by her girlfriend. The chords soon gather and transform into the kind of whine that Karen associates with dog whistles: high pitched, demanding.

When Karen releases the shutter on her camera, she’s drawn to Hernandez next, who continues from behind her kit, “Behind the excuse of medical research, animals are infected, suffocated, burned and more.” The expression she wears contrasts severely with the cotton candy pink of her drums, the almost juvenile nature of her appearance. “We, the human race,” she says, “fail to show empathy.”

Her amber eyes are fierce. There’s rage in her mouth that reminds Karen momentarily, vividly, of Kathy O’Brien.

Karen raises her camera again, fingers sliding against the zoom 50 millimeter lens, as Hernandez goes on, “They spend their lives in cages, unable to make choices or express natural behavior. Most never experience fresh air, or sunshine. Only bars and concrete. And the people who do this? Get to relax in their big homes far away from the screams.” 

In the space of a breath, both guitars shift, racing now – breakneck. When Karen’s attention shifts again, she finds Dean and Minoru grinning at each other. Dean bends over her guitar, her long, golden hair flying. Karen rapidly pivots, setting up for the shot she’ll get when Dean pulls back up.

“That’s where we come in,” Hernandez announces, “we have to fight until every cage is empty.”

The room explodes. Hernandez lays down fast, heavy, and _hard_ on her drums, just as Gert’s bass thunders into the fray. The vocals switch, all the girls leaning into their mics and screaming, “ _I’m not made for your science experiment! I’m not made for your science experiment!_ ”  

They’re _pissed_. It’s a level of sonic rage that feels both at home and at odds with the band: the jubilance of Hernandez’s pastel-everything; the trippy, starlight reflection of Dean’s guitar; even Gert’s purple hair and green bass give out a youthful, effervescent vibe. The only one who, aesthetically, seems to fall dead center on the energy of their songs, is Minoru.

Yet when Karen looks to her, she’s smiling wide, laughing as Dean and Gert battle out who can give their best eighties’ metal guitarist impression. (Dean’s the easy victor, her hair giving her the edge into absurdity that Gert’s short bob can’t quite reach.)

The songs are angry; these women are not.

Gert leans into the mic at the end of their set. She has two deep dimples in her cheeks when she smiles. Her frame is large, commanding the crowd’s attention. Karen twists, nearly turning her back to the stage to get the best shot she can of the way everyone seems to hyperfocus on Gert, following her movements. A snake charmed by her, the crowd writhes.

“We’re Arsenic and Old Lace,” she says. Her speaking voice is drastically softer than her singing voice, higher pitched despite a note of vocal fry. She sounds young, like the girls Karen went to college with. “And we’re so stoked to be here tonight. We’ve got a couple more for you, and then we’re gonna go have a beer and The Defenders are gonna show you something. Sound cool?”

The crowd screams back in the affirmative.

Gert answers them with a smile. “Cool,” she breathes into the mic, just as Dean steps on a pedal. Karen catches it with her camera. Dean’s shoes demand a great deal of attention – embroidered white converse, with shimmering sparkling thread reading, _Lucy in the sky with diamonds._ “This one’s called ‘Dead Means Dead’. Sing along if you know the words.”

Karen doesn’t expect what happens next. The set slows. Dean and Minoru’s guitars start to meander. The notes brush up against each other, carefully. They’re plucking almost in unison, leaning in close, their shoulders connected. Karen’s thumb flies against the shutter when their foreheads touch, knuckles brushing.

When the drums kick in, they’re rainfall soft – a gentle tapping of sticks against the very edge of a snare; the gentle, tinsel-rustle of a cymbal. Gert’s bass is the steadiest sound, and it comes in just before her vocals. As she starts to sing, the crowd opens up around her. 

“ _This could write itself, after hours at the beach_ ,” Gert croons, the crowd joining in. Karen’s gut clenches with the hope that her recorder’s catching this. The crowd had been a pushing, writhing mess. Now, they feel almost soothed, everything slowing down as they sing along with the band. “ _Up to the breakers in the dark, somewhere we’re not supposed to be._ ”

The song expands again, after the first verse, the crowd screaming and the pit opening at Karen’s back as they all shout, “ _We just want to be alone sometimes!_ ” Karen runs out of film just after she gets a shot of Minoru mid-jump, her thick-soled Doc Martens flying off the stage.

Karen doesn’t have any film left to shoot with, but she’s still got to record the last moments of the set for Trish. And, with the crowd the way it is, there’s no hope of her getting her camera tucked away into her bag until Arsenic and Old Lace is offstage anyway.

It’s a game to keep herself from getting barreled over after that. The audience is hungry, desperate for something. It’s a feeling Karen can’t quite access, but can feel the electric hum of it in the air. Her body sways with the rush of a hundred sweaty, joyous punks pushing forward. But she’s got good footing, and when she feels a man’s hand come down a little too heavily on her shoulder she shifts her foot and stamps down on his with the heel.

She hears his yelp, followed by a muttered _bitch!_ , but he’s swallowed by the crowd before Karen feels a need to dignify that with a response.

The band takes a while to exit – busy packing up their things, Jessica and Luke lending a hand while Danny checks over his synth, minimoog, and keys. The crowd thins, barely, affording her a little more breathing room. It doesn’t help much. She’s still got too much shit to juggle, her camera and lens requiring both hands to keep steady, her recorder still running in her bag.

“Hey,” a voice calls from close by. It’s all gravel. Karen looks over her shoulder to see Frank Castle, tawny eyes narrowed in his not-quite-smile. He sways a little as he works his way closer, weaving behind a guy talking to Gert while she sets her bass in its case. Frank’s eyes dart from Karen’s camera in her hands to her face, the corner of his lip curling in lopsided amusement when he says, “Looks like you could use a hand.” 

Karen tucks her bottom lip between her teeth, eyeing Frank – a taste germinates in her throat, a combination of copper and mint that sets her on edge.

Frank swerves slightly to the side, a goading quality in the shrug of his shoulders. “Unless you got it,” he adds. It’s a dry parody of the retort she’d levelled at him months ago. 

Karen blinks at him a beat. The smile he’s holding in his eyes loses ground to a momentary caution. But when Karen’s flush blooms, hot and pink on her cheeks and she tries to hide it with a duck of her head, it returns full force.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Karen breathes. Her scalp itches; her pale fingers twitch against the body of her camera, fighting the compulsion to card through her hair. She forces herself to swallow and continues, “Hold this.” She offers her camera up to him. It doesn’t occur to her to say _be careful_ when he takes it from her, hands warm and calloused brushing against her own. Frank knows his way around delicate equipment. Sure enough, Karen watches him mirror her hold on the camera: one hand supporting the body, the other her lens.

She looks away quickly, when his eyes catch hers – a note of teasing amusement remaining in the set of his eyebrows, his mouth. Her face still feels hot when she lowers her eyes and twists away from him to fish her recorder from her bag and turn it off.

Karen takes a deep breath. She worries her lip for a beat longer, eyes snagging on her camera in Frank’s hands – he makes the 50 millimeter lens look impossibly small in the one hand he has wrapped around it. _Jesus Christ._ She forces her attention back up. He’s watching her intently.

“Guess I deserved that,” she says, nodding a little and swallowing again. 

Frank grunts and readjusts his grip, brusquely dismissive of Karen’s past offense even as Karen knows he’ll have no problem bringing it up again, if he’s presented with a golden opportunity to give her shit. Which, if their time together so far is anything to go by, he will be.

He gestures towards her with the camera still in his hands, a tacit question. Karen nods, _yes_ , and he passes it back to her. Again, Karen feels struck by the wide press of Frank’s fingertips, and how dry the skin of his hands is, even in their brief contact.

“Thanks,” Karen mutters, mostly into her shirt, as she twists again, tucking her camera back into the safety of her bag. When she straightens, she says, “So. I hear your Defenders tour is happening.”

Frank raises an eyebrow, somewhere between a _no shit_ and undiluted, honest-to-god curiosity. Karen recognizes the expression. She’s used to seeing it under one of those large, circular lamps they’ve got hanging over the booths at Lou’s. “Looks that way,” he replies, expression lowering like an empty diner mug to a table.

Karen shifts her weight, her hair swinging over her shoulder as she situates the strap of her bag across her chest. “Danny seems thrilled,” she says, and pauses, brow pinching. She looks at Frank’s shoulder when she starts talking again. “He, uh, wants me to come along. So does Trish. To, uhm,” she swallows, nervous all over again. “Cover the tour. Take photos, write about it for the blog.”

Frank’s brow furrows, now in serious consideration. He’s just thinking it over, Karen knows. Still, the sudden silence strikes against her nerves, lights an unsteady flame of anxiety in her stomach. 

She slogs forward in the conversation, swallowing almost convulsively. She brushes her fingers over her forehead, up into her hair, clenching her fist briefly just to give her fluttering hands something to do. Karen meets Frank’s expression and, nerves or no, she can’t keep the note of amusement from her voice when she elaborates. “He seemed insistent it was the ‘will of the universe’, since I already know you and the band.”

The shift in Frank’s expression is expected: his lips tightening and folding downward all at once, eyes rolling just a little. His head turns a few degrees away from her, lips parting after a second in exasperation. It sends a shock of pride down her spine, that she’s finding the right barbs; that she can anticipate each action and reaction. Karen’s eyes idle over a thin scar on his right temple. 

Frank rolls his eyes again when he turns his face back to hers. “ _Will of the universe_ , huh?” he half laughs when he says it, dark and caked through with sarcasm. His bitter grin reveals a dimple in his cheek that Karen’s gaze catches on, and she lingers there until it disappears.

Her shoulders come up in a shrug, easing down again as she raises an eyebrow. “Guess so,” she answers. The words catch on the internal panic switches on her ribs, in the bones of her spine that reach up her throat. She’s supposed to be trying to move _on_ from the ballad of Frank Castle. It’s a story that’s done, she’s written it, she’s come up on enough closed doors in it that there’s nowhere left to dig, _but_ – 

“S’pose you could come by the show tomorrow night,” Frank says, withdrawing his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His mouth twists, lips coming together in a contemplative, exaggerated frown that’s punctuated by Frank ducking his head forward and shrugging, once. “Could figure out how that’d work.”

 _Oh_. Karen blinks in surprise. _Shit, shit, shit_. Frank’s not telling her to fuck off; he’s laughing, but he’s not laughing her out of the room. Instead, he’s laughing across from her at Danny’s expense, telling her to talk with his band about it.

In the same beat that he catches her surprise – a subtle shift in the landscape of his face, tectonic plates shifting and changing the line of his gaze towards study, consideration – Karen nods. It’s not a deep or strong affirmation, but she adds a soft, “Okay,” for good measure.

“Okay,” Frank echoes just as someone behind Karen jostles her, a sway of a hip into her bag; overloaded and overstuffed, its movement pulls Karen with it. Her eyes drop from Frank’s, down to the nude patent leather of her pumps. She reaches out with one hand, wrapping her fingers around a monitor to steady herself.

Frank does not ask if she needs a hand this time.

When she looks back up, Frank’s expression is reshaping. The lines of his face are somewhere in transit, not quite _softened_ but not quite stony, either, and Karen feels herself begin to flush in frustration, that she’s missed the moment of translation; feels as though she’s playing catch-up for missed hours even if she’d only looked away for a few seconds.

His dark eyes flick from Karen’s face to the stage and then back, before he gestures behind her. There’s the suggestion of a shrug in the line of Frank’s shoulders, a wordless indication that he’s needed elsewhere.

“Okay,” Karen says again, so low she barely hears herself.

Frank nods and turns to go. Karen watches him pass through the crowd, his shoulders parting a sea of bodies.

 

* * *

 

This time, Karen arrives early. The Safehouse is already beginning to fill with faces Karen recognizes as familiar. The stocky, cigar-smoking person in the _WEAPON X_ jacket that’s being told by Quentin to fuck off and smoke outside (“Do you _want_ the cops on our asses again?”); Quentin themself, the shirt under their pin-heavy blazer reading tonight _I Don’t Want To Be Or Look Cis_. They argue further in from the door, down by the bar. Sarah’s back is to them, her long hair acting as a curtain.

Spacker Dave greets her at the door, in the middle of setting up his card table and cash box. “Karen Page!” he says, flashing her a metallic smile. Even his teeth bare the flash of metal; a small horseshoe-shaped piercing runs through his gums, the curve of the barbell standing out against the straight lines of his teeth. “You hanging tonight?”

Karen’s cheeks turn in a smile, one she’s not conscious of giving. There’s no force behind the way it creeps up on her. She ducks her head, hair falling into her eyes. Karen pushes it back one-handed. “Uh, yeah,” she breathes, meeting Dave’s eyes. “Frank around?”

Dave nods three times. “Mmhm,” he says. He’s looking down, attention devoted to counting out the contents of the cash box, his fingers flipping through a stack of fives. Karen chews her lip and waits for him to finish, anxiety beginning to ice over her stomach in the quiet.

But Dave’s attention returns nearly as quick as it had gone. He puts down the wad of bills when he’s finished and reaches for the stamp and ink pad next to the cash. “He’s down there,” Dave says, jerking his head into the main, cavernous space. Karen follows the motion and almost chuckles when her eyes land on Frank. He’s onstage, all the way at the back of the venue, crouched by a drum kit.

She’s treated to a view of the top of his head, all dark stubble. She recognizes him by his boots and the black smudge of text on his knuckles, his hands working on what appears to be an overturned stool. Frank uses a multitool to pry a piece of metal off the bottom of it.

“Here,” David says, dragging her attention back. He’s holding out the stamp with one hand and gesturing with the other, outstretched towards her. “Let me stamp you.”

“Oh!” Karen blinks. She offers the back of her right hand to Dave. “Thanks,” she says as he presses the stamp onto her skin. This week it’s in the shape of a dog.

It’s just as Karen’s saying goodbye to Dave that she’s accosted with a familiar cackle. “Hey, Legs!” Kathy’s sharp, dry voice calls. Karen wheels at the sound, searching her out with a spiking heart rate.

Kathy’s just exiting the narrow hallway that leads back into where Dave and Quentin live. She’s carrying two heavy boxes – Karen recognizes her by the shock of colorful ink that reaches up one arm. It’s all she can see of the woman, other than her bare legs and combat boots. “Give me a hand,” Kathy shouts, turning just enough to peer at Karen around the boxes.

She obliges, her heels clicking on the floor as she makes her way across the room. Karen reaches out, lets Kathy slide the top box into the cradle of her arms before realizing she hadn’t hesitated a moment.

“Shit,” Kathy exhales as the boxes slide and thunk in their exchange. Karen shifts under the weight, balancing. It’s heavy, but she’s not going to let Kathy know it. Leatherneck’s bassist shoots Karen a now familiar grin, wide and wolfish. “Guess you’re not entirely useless.” 

Karen doesn’t allow herself to respond to the taunt. Kathy gestures forward with her head. “This way.”

Following Kathy, they walk to where there’s a handful of other card tables set up, just across the way from Dave’s. Behind one is the soft-spoken woman Karen recognizes from the last time she’d been at The Safehouse on a show night. She’s adjusting a table that’s piled high with pamphlets and zines, setting down a tray of what looks like –

“Oh, shit, brownies?” Kathy says, crouching down to set her box on the floor next to one of the empty card tables. “Fuck yeah.”

The woman startles at the heavy drop of Kathy’s box. Her back goes ramrod straight and her head snaps up. Her eyes are a rich brown and wide with fear. It makes something fragile wrench in Karen’s chest. She wants to reach out, do something, when the woman’s gaze lands on Kathy and softens instantly.

“Oh, h-hello,” she says in a voice that’s more air than tone – Karen has to strain to hear her. “Would you...like one, Kathy?” she asks, offering the tray. She’s wearing a navy blue sweatshirt that looks at least four sizes too large for her diminutive frame, the hem nearly reaching her denim clad knees.

“Shit, thanks,” Kathy says, helping herself to a corner piece.

The woman smiles, so brief Karen almost misses it; a quick fold of one corner of her lips, the parenthetical lines around her mouth deepening. Her choppy bangs fall to cover her eyes when she sets the tray back down. “I’ve g-got some for Frank ba...back here…” the woman trails off, stooping down to rummage among the milk crates stacked behind one of the card tables.

Kathy motions for Karen to set her box down next to the first with a pointed look and a gesture made with one steel-toed boot. “I’ll let ‘im know, Joan,” Kathy says. Her voice is a full octave higher when speaking to the woman – _Joan_ – and softer, too. The edges of her consonants disappear, Kathy dialed back in a way that leaves Karen staring.

Karen hides her surprise by crouching down – careful to mind her skirt – and dropping her box in its designated space. When she straightens, one hand smoothing over the oxblood linen of her pencil skirt, Kathy says, “Legs, say hello to Joan.” She gestures to Joan, the other woman’s eyes downcast. Her shoulders turn in on themselves, her chin disappearing into the collar of her sweatshirt. “Joan, this is Karen, the reporter who’s been doin’ a piece on Frankie.” 

Karen extends her hand, and tilts her head to meet Joan’s gaze. Her eyes, when Karen finds them, are the color of soil, warm and little sunbaked on a pleasant July afternoon. Karen’s expression shifts, a tentative smile reaching out towards the other woman. “Hi,” she says, keeping her voice even and gentle.   

“Hello,” Joan squeaks. Both corners of her mouth twitch upwards. Lines appear around her eyes, outlining exhausted bruises underneath. Karen recognizes them from her own bathroom mirror. “You were here the oth...other week,” Joan adds. Her voice is lyrical, in a way – breezy, barely there. Dropping out mid-word to catch her breath, try again. “Drawing.”

Karen flushes. Embarrassed laughter bubbles in her chest and escapes her throat in a brief burst. “Uh, yeah,” she admits. Kathy’s eyes burn into the side of Karen’s face. Her stomach crawls up along her spine. “Nervous habit.” Karen chews on her bottom lip. 

Joan nods once, shrugging slightly. “I b-bake,” she offers, and then reaches back for the tray of brownies. “You ca...can have some too.”

Karen blinks. Swallows. “Um, sure,” Karen replies. It brings the brief smile back to Joan’s face, wider now, with a little teeth. Karen takes a brownie from the tray. She’s not hungry, but the thought of refusing Joan doesn’t cross her mind. When she has her brownie stored safely in her hands, she adds, “Thank you.”

“So. You still writing that fucking thing?” Kathy’s voice snaps the pleasant moment in half, aimed squarely at Karen. Joan ducks her head, busies herself with fanning pamphlets across the tabletop.

“Uhm, I… yes.” The lie slips out before Karen can stop it. The piece has been up for about eighteen hours. There’s an email notification on her phone from Ellison, subject reading: _Have You Seen the Retweets?_

Kathy quirks one sharp eyebrow. “Huh.”

All at once, Karen’s reminded acutely of Frank. Kathy’s short enough that Karen has to tilt her chin down to maintain eye contact. It’s a disconcerting, borderline physical sensation – for a split second, Karen feels a ceramic mug against her palm. She clears her throat. “Finishing touches, you know, the,” Karen whets her lips, fights not to clear her throat a second time, “the editing process.” _Fuck_.

Kathy just stares at her: arms crossed, one hip cocked slightly. It’s maybe the quietest Karen has seen her. At least insults punctuated by Kathy’s cutting laughter gave Karen something to work with. Now, Karen is being watched. It hits her all at once, hard, that of course Kathy doesn’t need words to make her harsh energy felt. Her dark brown eyes – locked on Karen’s, wide and blue – are enough.

“Well.” Kathy says, finally. Her tone is downturned, at once hard and amused, housing a strange tension Karen can’t parse. “He’s in the green room.” Kathy shoves the rest of her brownie into her mouth. Karen thinks she unhinges her jaw to do so. It’s a big brownie. Mouth still half-full, she meets Karen’s stare and asks, “You comin’, Legs?”

Kathy’s matter-of-fact tone takes Karen by surprise, and her thoughts stall, mental key turning in the ignition. She clears her throat and wraps one hand around the shoulder strap of her bag. “Lead the way,” she replies. Kathy flashes a jaunty grin before heading off.

Remembering her manners – drilled into her like a Pavlovian bell – Karen turns to Joan and gives her a soft, “It was nice to meet you,” the last syllable of which is drowned out by the sound of a guitar being hooked into an amp.

Still, Joan meets her eyes and the corners of her mouth twitch up into another smile that disappears as quick as it came. Her lips twist a moment, as if negotiating a word that never comes. Instead, Joan offers Karen a slight nod and plucks a set of foam earplugs out of a ziplock bag full to bursting with them on the table in front of her. Karen blinks, turning and breaking into a jog to keep up with Kathy.

The Safehouse is beginning to tightly pack with bodies, shuffling closer and closer to the stage where the night’s opener runs through a quick soundcheck. Karen’s just caught up to Kathy when the guitarist – a young black man with thin-rimmed glasses, dark hair gathered into narrow locs and swept raffishly to one side – leans into the mic and checks with a _shit-FUCK-cock_. Kathy snorts with glee.

“S’Killmonger up first tonight,” she explains as they duck back around the bar. Sarah waves hello to both of them. Karen’s being led through an alternate route to the green room from the one Micro had chosen, this one taking them around the bar and through what appears to be the bar’s storeroom. “Fuckin’ shame you’re gonna miss ‘em, talking to Frank. They’re playin’ AFROPUNK next month.” Kathy cracks her jaw. 

“Huh,” is all Karen manages to say before Kathy’s telling her to watch her step at the green room’s threshold.

It’s crowded when Kathy directs Karen in with a jerk of her chin. A black woman with long, loosely curled hair carries a bass guitar on her back and two pedalboards stacked in her hands across the room, lingering near the exit that leads to the stage. She’s followed closely by a tall dude with a shaved head, drumsticks in hand. His deeply tanned skin is shiny with sweat, and when he passes closer Karen sees that his head isn’t clean-shaven; his hair is just close-cropped and thickly coiled. Karen takes her eyes off him to find Rachel sitting on the couch, cross-legged with her guitar balanced on her knees, adjusting knobs along the body. Her head is bent, errant strands of bright red hair pulling free from her ponytail. She doesn’t look up at their entry.  

Micro’s standing at a card table that’s unfolded in the corner to Karen’s immediate left. They’re leaning over a large page, brow bent in concentration. Their focus is intent on the page, pencil scratching. Their bottom lip is painted a glittery purple, caught between their front teeth.

And Frank is on the floor. Seated in a position similar to Micro’s the last time Karen was here, Frank sits with his back pressed against the couch, one leg splayed and the other bent up at the knee, a floor monitor between them. He’s got the long sleeves of yet another black t-shirt pushed up to the crook of his elbows, and his large hands are dark with grime. There’s something between his lips, what looks like pliers gripped in his right hand. There’s two piles of wiring next to him – one, stripped and frayed, the other appearing newer, housed in insulation tubing of various colors.

“Reporter’s here,” Kathy announces dryly, stalking past Karen into the room. 

At Kathy’s proclamation, the rest of Leatherneck looks up. Rachel’s glance is brief, a jerking nod of her head spared in Karen’s direction. Frank considers her a beat before grunting around whatever’s held in his mouth, attention sliding back to the monitor.

Micro’s face brightens when their eyes land on her. “Karen, hey! How goes it?”

Before Karen can respond, Kathy answers, “It’s wrapping up, thank fuck.”

Micro and Frank’s brows crease in almost perfect unison, then. Frank looks back up at her and Micro cocks their head to one side. Kathy stops short in front of the chick with the bass and the pedalboards, outstretching her arms for one. The girl obliges and Kathy disappears with her through the stage door.

“Wrapping what up?” Micro asks, gaze flitting momentarily towards Frank. There’s an unspoken message being telegraphed. Karen doesn’t know the code.

She swallows. “The, uh,” she combs her hair back with her fingers, thinks maybe she should have run a brush through it after her bus ride. “Finishing touches on my piece.” 

The answering silence gnaws at Karen’s stomach.

Frank is staring at her. By now, she almost expects the strange, halfway hidden smile-that’s-not-a-smile before it happens. But this is different. For a split-second before his expression warms, Frank’s face goes utterly blank.

Karen glances between him and Micro, who’s looking at Frank with a close-mouthed, lopsided smile that feels too specific for comfort. They look… _smug_.

For his part, Frank isn’t looking at Micro at all. It seems like it’s on purpose. Not that Karen’s unfamiliar with Micro’s nonverbal, cheeky communications. The surprise is that Frank is a participant, the person on the opposite end of Micro’s silent tin can phone. The tag-team of Micro and Kathy is familiar; this is not.

The abrupt shift in atmosphere doesn’t last more than five seconds, but Karen feels like she’s missing something vital, the sensation of being out of the loop gripping the back of her neck with nervous heat. It holds her in place, until Micro comes out from behind the card table and waves her further into the room.

“Awesome!” Micro continues, plucking two water bottles from the open pack under the card table. When they bounce back up to a standing position, they give Karen a 500-watt smile, dimples and all. When they slide into her space, Karen catches a flash of purple glitter scraped off on one of their front teeth. Micro offers her one of the water bottles as they continue, “We’re on after Killmonger, so uh. You’re welcome to hang out? You taking pictures?”

Karen blinks, thoughts halting for a half second before clicking into gear: she has an in to get candid shots of a band that’s never been professionally photographed. She’ll take it. Sure, her piece has already run. Sure, it’s sitting on Noisey’s site right now, racking up enough clicks to send Ellison running to her inbox, but. Her camera is in her bag, loaded with a new roll of film. And her hands feel hungry with want for something to do. 

(Notwithstanding the compulsive urge she feels to cling to this band, this space. Because she’s not thinking about it. She decided that when she’d emailed in the piece, two-fifths through the nice bottle of scotch her dad had sent her when she’d emailed him that she had _an office_ , courtesy of her position at _Alt Trish_. He’d said every good journalist had desk scotch.

Somehow, Karen doesn’t think her dad expected her to be drinking it because she’d managed to attach herself to a piece about a band comprised mostly of people who’ve got enough blood on their names to make themselves sick.)

She accepts the water offered her and nods, swallowing. “If it’s alright with you,” she insists. And adds, before she can talk herself out of it, “Maybe backstage shots, and some of your performance?”

Micro turns to Rachel and Frank. Rachel hums, a neutral sound to Karen’s ear that apparently counts as agreement, if Micro’s pleased nod is anything to go by. Ice runs over her nerve endings as Micro’s attention, as well as her own, turns to Frank.

 _No one_ has ever shot a Leatherneck show.

Frank drops his eyes when Karen looks at him, and pulls what looks like a hunk of metal and plastic from where it’s tucked between his lips. He nods, once. “Fair enough.” His attention is fixed on the monitor between his legs as he fastens the device to the exposed copper of a half-stripped wire.

Through the green room’s thin walls, Karen can hear Killmonger begin their set: a guitar howling one lone chord, joined by a kickdrum shortly after. Any lyrics are garbled by the walls, the crowd, and the fact that the green room is situated more or less behind the stage. Any chance of properly hearing Killmonger’s set is shot.

“You’re sure?” Karen asks, unable to mask the anxiety mounting in her throat. “What about Kathy’s –?” She means to finish _What about Kathy’s vote?_ But the woman in question appears in the doorway between green room and stage just as Karen says her name.

“What about Kathy?” she echoes, arching one dark eyebrow. She crosses her arms over her chest, Adam’s apple bobbing. Defensive already. Karen blanches.

“Legs wants to shoot the show,” Rachel says, looking up from her guitar to where Kathy leans against the wall by the door.

“It’s really not necessary, I just –” Karen backpedals.

Rachel speaks over her. “We’re cool with it,” she continues. Her voice is level, a steady alto that refuses to betray any emotion. It’s commanding in a way that reminds Karen of her AP U.S. History teacher – no-nonsense and enviably self-assured. “But she wanted to make sure you got your say.”  

“Hell yeah, direct democracy,” Micro interjects, offering out a closed fist to Karen. She stares for half a second before realizing they intend to bump fists with her. She obliges.

Kathy mulls it over, her attention zig-zagging from Rachel, aloof on the couch, to Micro and Karen on the opposite wall, grinning and staring respectively. There’s a pregnant pause, the sound of the show and the metallic noises of Frank’s work on the monitor filling the void, before Kathy shrugs. “We ain’t got a waiver for bodily harm.”

It takes a moment for the barb Kathy’s roundabout acceptance comes wrapped in to connect. When it does, determination surges in Karen’s gut. She crosses her arms over her chest, feels the tension mounting in her face. Karen’s mouth turns down. Her cheeks flush, not out of embarrassment this time. She gives Kathy a withering look. “I can handle myself,” she replies.

“Your call, Legs,” Kathy returns, shrugging again before she waltzes towards the case of water, the conversation apparently over. Everything from the set of her shoulders to the rhythm of her stride is taunting. 

Karen’s still quietly fuming, however. Any fear that had begun to usurp her drive to be the first person to shoot a Leatherneck show retreats in the face of sheer fucking _annoyance_ at being underestimated because she’s wearing a pencil skirt and heels instead of tattered denim shorts and combat boots.

She hasn’t shot a show since her first assignment for the school paper in college. The Student Activities Committee held a back-to-school festival her sophomore year. An electronica duo headlined. The experience had been miserable and Karen had said never again. But fuck this.

Karen opens her mouth to speak, but is stopped short when Frank looks up from his work again and says, “She’s got it, O’Brien.” His voice is clipped and final. Karen stares at Frank, his expression almost _scolding_ – one eyebrow lifted just barely higher than the other, brown eyes fixed on Kathy in one hell of a _cut the shit_ stare.   

The energy coming off Kathy reminds Karen of rattlesnakes in John Wayne movies. She can practically hear the old-timey piano when she looks to Kathy, as if the camera were panning to a rattler on the sand, signalling to the audience: _Danger!_

(Her brother had gone through a deep, deep ‘Western’ phase when he was six. She’d forgotten about it until just now – the immediacy of the memory almost makes Karen stagger. She can remember being fourteen, not wanting to chase her brother around the yard with a plastic silvery pistol, her mother’s put-upon sigh. _Please, Karen, just be nice to him_.

Kevin would never get older than she was in that moment. And she hadn’t even been nice to him.)

Neither Karen nor Kathy speak after Frank: Karen caught in a bear trap of memory, Kathy sliding her focus away from her to lock eyes with Frank for a heavy moment before turning back to Karen.

The pause lasts just a beat too long. Karen swallows and comes to when she realizes the room’s attention is on her.

She shrugs, drags a hand up her forehead and through her hair as her shoulders lift and fall. “If it’s too much I’ll sneak back here, it’s – whatever, you know?” Her voice is too breathy: a tell.

Karen can feel Rachel’s eyes on her, gray gaze blunt and cataloguing. Karen looks away, anywhere else. Her eyes land on the now-abandoned card table. The room feels… thorny.

Micro takes it in stride. “See?”

They lean into Karen, the top of their shoulder pressing into her mid-bicep. The touch takes Karen by surprise – but instead of jumping away from it, she has to fight to keep from leaning into Micro’s warm, solid weight when they sway away. Despite the summer heat, the brief physical contact is more grounding than unsettling. There’s no rush of fear; instead, Karen’s internal alarms signal something else – the hesitant nudge of dawning familiarity.

There’s a distinct current of aggression in the room, lighting up Karen’s senses in an uneasy pulse, and carrying with it a certainty that Karen can’t ignore: right now, she’d still rather be here than anywhere else in New York.

“Karen’s gonna be _fine_ ,” Micro finishes. Their smile is back, kind and dimpled. Their round cheeks are flushed from the mounting humidity and Karen can see sweat starting to make their topknot tacky. They take a drink from their water bottle.

“Thanks,” she breathes. Her own water bottle hangs in one hand. It feels like Micro offered it to her an hour ago. The mercurial energy of the green room sets Karen on edge, as volatile as New England weather – _If you don’t like it, wait a minute_ , her dad used to say.

“‘Course,” Micro says once they’ve finished their swig; the eco-friendly plastic of the bottle crinkles as they screw the top back on. There’s a sly tilt to their grin, a slow return to the expression Karen had seen aimed at Frank earlier. “Anything to help you finish up.”

Karen tracks Frank ducking his head in her periphery. 

Micro’s vulpine smirk melts into a big, goofy smile. Karen blinks. Takes a drink of water to hide her staring, transfixed and confused all over again.

“Sheesh Microchip,” Kathy says, hoisting herself up to sit on the card table, water bottle between her knees, “you break into Frank’s brownie stash?”

The question deflates Micro’s expression. They roll their eyes toward Kathy. “ _No_ ,” they insist, unscrewing the top of their water bottle once more before flicking it at Kathy. It hits her square between the eyes. “Jerk. You know I can’t keep time stoned.”

Kathy cackles when the bottle cap connects, wetting her fingers and flicking water at Micro, getting Karen in the process. Micro giggles. “Then stop acting like a weird little shit.”

The exchange throws Karen. Shock of water notwithstanding, she’s been provided unexpected details.

One: that Kathy’s apparently just as confused by Micro’s behavior as she is. _Kathy_ , who is the two-punch of the Kathy-and-Micro-one-two-punch, apparently thinks Micro’s _high_ because of how secretive and smiley they’re being. 

(And relatedly, is Kathy actually coming to Karen’s _defense_? Karen’s all-too aware of how much of herself she reveals in her face. Micro’s newfound giddy interest in her piece – as opposed to the casual, friendly interest they’d expressed before – is making her anxiety run laps around her brain. Can Kathy tell? Does Kathy _care_?)

Two: _Frank’s brownie stash_ translates to: Joan makes pot brownies for Frank. Unpacked, that means not _only_ that Joan – sweet, skittish Joan – bakes brownies with weed in them, but that she somehow _acquires_ said weed. And, of course, it means that Frank gets high.

Karen’s not exactly judging. Her own smoking habit had been regular back home, since her second semester of senior year. Weed was a good way to wind down, especially after editorial meetings for the paper or classes where she’d gotten the bone of an argument with another (invariably male) student between her teeth and couldn’t let go.

She hasn’t smoked much since moving to New York. She’d carefully rationed out the last of her stash before moving, methodically rolling her joints at her desk in her childhood bedroom. Initially, she’s stuck to using a pipe, but the first – and only (it had been an experiment, driven by casual curiosity) – girl Karen had ever kissed rolled her own, and taught Karen to as well. The mechanical, repetitive motions of rolling had drawn her in; something meditative in focusing on the task.

Then again, her supply of perfectly rolled joints had run out three months ago.

The thing is, Frank doesn’t seem the type. They’d discussed, though briefly, that Frank doesn’t drink. He’d tensed at the subject, so Karen hadn’t pressed, diverting the line of inquiry toward her remaining stockpile of basic questions about tour life.

So of course, she’s asking before she realizes it: “Edibles, Frank?”

He looks up at her, his brow furrowed. He shrugs. “Got a bad shoulder and a bum knee,” he replies, matter-of-fact.

Karen nods, embarrassment skirting her thoughts. She drops her gaze to the floor. It’s not as if Frank doesn’t have a litany of medical concerns dating back long before Leatherneck was barely a sketch of a song in his notebook. Karen _knows_ Frank’s approaching his mid-thirties, and that he’s not easy on himself. That his life is a study of injury and reinjury; a gradual sacrifice of the body because there is work to be done, with the in-between moments spent negotiating scars.

People get hurt. People die. Frank being forthright (and typically laconic) about his own physical shortcomings shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“You gonna narc, Legs?” Kathy demands, leaning forward. Her elbows rest on her knees, water bottle still gripped loosely in one hand.

“No!” Karen breathes, shaking her head. Her free hand reaches up to rake through her hair. “God, no,” she insists. “I’d never –” she pauses, finishes pulling her hair away from her face. She tracks her gaze from Kathy back towards Frank, an instinctive motion compounded by an urge to drive home that she _wouldn’t_. As she does, her tongue darts out over the corner of her mouth, scraping against her teeth. “I mean – I’d be turning myself in, if I was.”

Kathy’s shrill cackle is the only reaction Karen’s revelation gets. Frank and Rachel are as nonplussed as ever – though Rachel has finished whatever adjustments she was making on her guitar and is now surveying the conversation. Micro’s smile is ever-present, so Karen doesn’t catalogue it as a reaction to her circumspect, uncomfortable admission: _I smoke weed! Please, I’m cool!_ Smooth. 

“Well, good fuckin’ shit, Legs,” Kathy says, before taking a long swig of water.

 _Goddamnit_. Karen has to get it together. They think she’s here to finish up her piece. So: questions. Her eyes scan the room, scrabbling for anything to shape into inquiry. The water, then. And the weed. _C’mon, Page._

“You guys always play sober then?” she asks, jerking her head towards the water bottle resting between Kathy’s knees. There’s another folding chair across from the corner where Kathy sits. Karen tucks her own water into her bag and walks over, takes a seat. Busies herself with pulling her camera out from her bag.

“Mhm,” Rachel answers. Karen turns her attention to the redhead. The sound of her voice makes Karen pause before freeing the camera from her bag, rapt despite herself – Rachel is easily the most withdrawn of the band, more reserved than even Frank. She’s never been _unkind_ ; Karen’s mostly just gotten the sense that Rachel is farther away than the rest of Leatherneck, a question of miles versus kilometers. “Micro’s right about our sound being tighter sober, but that’s generally true for everyone. And, we’re the oldest people in the room, most of the time.”

Karen nods, picking up the thread. “So it’s a security practice,” she concludes.

“For us as well as everyone at the show,” Rachel replies, with a nod of her own.

“And,” Micro adds, dropping to the floor beside the card table Kathy’s perched on, “I’m sure you know shows aren’t exactly sober spaces. Hardcore dudes, plus alcohol…”

Kathy finishes Micro’s sentence, eyes not quite meeting anyone else’s. “Means everybody else at the show’s in fucking danger,” she says, blunt. “Means we get to bash some heads in, but. Y’know,” Kathy looks up. Her dark eyes are hard. “Men are fucking pigs.”

A heavy silence, then. One that Karen doesn’t know how to shatter. It doesn’t last long though, because a switch flips in Kathy and she returns to devil-may-care mode, throwing Frank a sardonic smile and adding, “Present fucking company not included, I guess.”

There’s a fraction of a beat, just as Karen’s turning her attention onto Frank. An infinitesimal deepening in the fold of his brow, a downward jerk of his mouth – discomfort with the left-handed compliment, maybe. The expression dissolves quickly, as if Frank turned a crank inside his head, slotting a different reaction in place of the original one. He’s smiling now, crooked and close-mouthed. It feels hollow. Karen can’t scrub that initial frown from her mind.

She feels her own brow creasing, considering. She’d guess he took offense at the _men are pigs_ thing, only… only. Frank doesn’t get offended. At least, not over dumb shit like that. And when it comes to predatory men at shows, Karen’s certain Frank knows the score. He said as much to her, that first meeting at Lou’s. That, and she can’t imagine Frank surviving being the only man in Leatherneck – let alone having _Kathy_ as a bandmate – if he gave half a shit about _misandry_ , of all fucking things.

Frank snorts at Kathy, then, but the sound is humorless. Karen notes that Frank hadn’t looked up, when Kathy’d spoken. Not even when she addressed him directly, only offering a furtive flick of his eyes in her direction. Karen also notes that something in Frank’s demeanor had locked up the second Micro broached the subject of predatory concertgoers in the first place; his gaze directed into the floor monitor he’s been methodically rearranging this entire time suddenly not seeming to track any details therein; dark eyes reflecting a distance, like when someone’s staring at an open book but clearly isn’t comprehending any words on the page. 

There’s intent in his body language, though. It translates into a kind of deference, acknowledging Kathy’s sentiment without leaning on it too hard. Karen huffs inadvertently, thinking of all the men she’s known who are too quick to jump onto the coattails of a woman’s complaint about men in general, like if they voice their support loudly enough they’ll never be mistaken for one of the _bad ones_. Like they should be afforded exempt status, a double-agent in the war of the sexes.

That shit always did rub her wrong. But looking at Frank, now, there’s no trace of ingratiation. Karen’s instincts tell her that Frank’s discomfort at being tacitly deemed _one of the good ones_ is more complicated, more personal than Karen’s equipped to understand right now. She files it away for later, and decides _present fucking company not included_ doesn’t quite cover it, regardless of if Frank agrees with Kathy or not.

Karen switches her attention back towards her camera, glad for the fact that she’s left the fifty millimeter lens on. ( _Nifty fifty_ , her professor used to call it in her photography classes.) It’s versatile enough that she can make the most out of the night. As she checks over her camera and Leatherneck retreats into a comfortable silence, she hears Killmonger, on the other side of the wall, the lead singer’s voice achieving a startling clarity in the silence between songs.  

" _We’ve got one more song for y’all. This one’s for our ancestors, who knew death was better than bondage. ‘S called “The Ocean”._ "

Jesus. The concise intensity of the words temporarily fixates Karen. The song, the dedication – they’re not for her, not in the slightest. But there is a more devastating understanding of truth that strikes through her when she hears them. Their power leaves Karen with her hands still around the body of her camera, chewing on the self-awareness she’s left with.

She’s trying to conceptualize the area, mass, and volume of a grief that large, that far-flung. The truth is that she can’t, and never will. Her history encompasses her own mourning. But her history also rests on and facilitates the filling of that ocean.

While Karen attempts to circumnavigate, Leatherneck springs into action. She misses Rachel quickly testing her strings’ tension; misses Kathy unearthing her bass, and Micro dragging out a bucket of drumsticks. Misses Frank standing up off the floor. It’s the heavy sound of the monitor Frank’d been working on dragging against the floor as he pushes it out of the way with the side of his boot that finally snaps Karen’s attention to the scene before her.

Members of Killmonger begin to snake back into the green room, the roar of the crowd following them through the open stage door. They move quickly, shuffling guitars and pedalboards into the room as Leatherneck deploys simultaneously. Everyone’s expression is serious, though Rachel does clasp hands with Killmonger’s lead vocalist, tapping their shoulders together in a one-armed hug as they pass each other. There’s friendly recognition in the man’s eyes that makes Karen curious, but Rachel is gone before Karen can get a look at her face.

When Kathy slides back into the green room with one of Killmonger’s floor toms in tow, she raises an eyebrow in Karen’s direction. “Don’t tell me you’re pussing out.” 

Karen scowls. Camera resting in her lap, she tugs her hair into a no-nonsense bun with the elastic band she keeps around her wrist. “Not a chance,” she insists. Hair tucked out of the way, Karen rises, setting her camera down gingerly on the now-empty chair. She spares a glance to the doorway Kathy had come through, glimpsing the corner of The Safehouse’s stage: scuffed and worn wood, spray painted black. A single threadbare rug covers the bulk of the immovable wires and cables belonging to the in-house sound equipment, but more cabling lays all over; hook-ups from various instruments, lights, monitors. Sighing, Karen jerks off her heels and leaves them with her bag. She grabs her camera once more, sliding the strap across her body and standing tall, facing Kathy head on. 

Leatherneck’s bassist smirks. “Atta girl, Legs,” she quips, setting down the tom. She reaches for something on the card table, small enough that Karen can’t make out exactly what it is before it’s tossed her direction, Kathy saying only, “Bombs away.” 

Karen’s hands scramble to protect her camera and catch whatever it is Kathy’s just thrown to her. Her fingers wrap around crinkling plastic. A miniature ziplock bag. Squishy contents, that give easily in her tight grasp. She looks into her palm. Earplugs. She looks back up. Kathy’s already shoving a pair in her ears, her back to Karen as she exits the green room, followed closely by Rachel and Micro.

Watching them now, Karen notices that everyone in Leatherneck wears earplugs. They’re bright orange, and the only people who seem to make them look natural are Rachel and Micro – they’re lost in the former’s bright tangle of red hair, and the latter makes them look like a fashion accessory, matching their orange glasses perfectly.

Frank’s the only one who hasn’t stepped onstage yet. Karen blinks, turning to look at him as he steps up beside her, the stage door swinging shut and leaving them both in a relative hush. He throws a rag he’d been using to scrub his hands more or less clean of grime into a nearby bin, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a ziplock bag of his own. Opening it, he looks down at the earplugs with more focus than Karen figures is strictly necessary – he doesn’t look up at her once, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he rolls the bits of foam between calloused fingertips.

He glances to the side, eyes momentarily landing somewhere by Karen’s jaw before sliding down to her stockinged feed. She doesn’t miss the faint amusement on his face, then, mouth curling at one corner. Karen flexes her toes involuntarily, nails freshly painted a deep violet, visible through her thin, work-appropriate nude tights. 

Frank huffs, inserting a plug in one ear. “So,” he starts, staring at her purple toes a beat longer before training his gaze on the stage door, “you talked to Gunner, huh?”

For a moment, Karen has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. Then she freezes.

Karen’s mouth opens and closes. He knows. _He knows_. The – the _weirdness_ , Micro’s reaction. _Anything to help_ , Karen’s fucking ass. They all _know_ it’s published and Frank let her just – flail. Her entire body feels hot all over, like when she’s been out in the sun for longer than a minute without sunscreen. Uncomfortable. Itchy.

Karen can’t feel her face, has no idea what it’s doing as she stares at Frank.

And Frank still isn’t fucking looking at her, the _prick_. Instead, he inserts a plug in his other ear and reaches out, just barely grazing Karen’s left elbow with the palm of his right hand before dropping his arm back to his side and stepping through the door, out onto the stage.  

Her jaw works and her elbow, now bereft of contact, seems to _tingle_. Every hair stands upright and her skin adopts the texture of gooseflesh, despite the fact that the loose flyaway hairs she wasn’t able to scoop up into her bun cling to the back of her neck with sweat. 

 _So,_ his fucking. Not-quite drawl. Raspy. _You talked to Gunner, huh?_ The sly fucking lilt to his words; the fox-like way he wouldn’t quite make eye contact, amusement folding the corners of his eyes and lips.

Not only does he know. He _read it_. The realization steals all the breath from Karen’s lungs, her throat. He _read_ what she wrote. And now she’s trapped here, signed on to photograph his show without even knowing what he _thinks_.

“ _Asshole_ ,” Karen mutters after him. Turning to look to the stage, she sees that – in the seconds or minutes she’s spent standing here, struggling to cope with Frank Castle – Killmonger is breaking down the last pieces of their equipment. She does everything she can to shove aside the embarrassment burning in her marrow. She has to get these shots. She _has to_.  

Karen upends the bag’s contents into her palm and begins to roll them into her ears, chasing after Frank, the body of her camera swaying against her hip.

The earplugs make the crowd sound far, far away. It helps Karen take her eyes off the massive knot of people just below them. When she’s not looking, she can pretend there are yards of distance between them, instead of barely two feet. The added psychic distance only removes her further from the _reality_ of the situation, makes it easier to pretend that nothing is wrong. That Frank Castle hasn’t read the words she wrote about him. This is a dream, and she can wake up from it later.

Looking around, she sees she’s not the only barefoot person onstage either. Micro’s floral print Doc Martens rest behind their stool, propped against the back wall. Their socks are printed with tiny, cartoon sharks. It’d make Karen laugh if her insides weren’t tangled around themselves; if she weren’t newly spun by Frank’s little revelation.

But she can’t think about that now. Karen raises her camera by instinct, crouching down beside a large amp to her immediate left once she’s stepped properly out of the green room’s doorway. She snaps a picture.

What’s perhaps most fascinating is what she sees when she slowly stands back up. The earplugs make it nearly impossible to pick up specific sounds – every noise gets swallowed up by a dull roar, an ocean of muffled voices and feedback. This does not hinder Leatherneck’s rigorous set-up. They move seamlessly around one another, sans the moments of humble confusion that Karen might expect in such a chaotic setting. 

They’re using hand signals, ones Karen is unable to decipher. She watches Rachel sign something to Frank without even looking up from where she’s crouched on stage left, in front of her pedalboard. Frank brings over a new cable without question, swapping them out for Rachel while she examines something on the body of her guitar.

It takes Karen a beat to suss that Micro is attempting to signal her as well, though in a much more generic fashion. She’s too busy watching Rachel and Frank to see them wave their arms towards her. It takes Kathy walking past her to drag Karen’s attention to Micro – Kathy knocks their shoulders together as she thunders past, jerking her head in Micro’s direction when Karen startles.

“Shit, sorry,” Karen says, automatic, as she jogs the short distance toward them. She realizes Micro can’t hear her a beat later, when they pull one ear plug out. Karen does the same. The cacophony slams into her right side, from where she’d pulled the plug. Within seconds it’s nearly overwhelming, and when she reminds herself that Leatherneck aren’t even _playing_ yet, a deep stab of gratitude towards Kathy lances Karen’s guts.

Micro shouts to be heard. “You can hang back here with me, in case they pull anyone out of the pit, ‘kay?!” They offer a questioning thumbs up as well.

Karen nods, her stomach twisting as she looks back out at the crowd. Her gaze settles on Frank, stilled somewhat near the stage’s edge. Rachel and Kathy must be nearly finished setting up, because he’s not looking to them for signals anymore. Karen’s struck by the utter stillness of his hands, hanging at his sides.

She can see the dark, permanent bruise near the base of his skull. His body is a swath of shadow in the bright lights of the venue; a vortex of dark mass tugging her attention closer, closer. She wishes she could see his face. Suddenly, without access to it, Karen feels ill at ease, untethered in a way that throws her further off balance than she already is. All Frank’s nuance seems to have been rubbed out, when his face is no longer visible.

All Karen’s left with is the hard line of his shoulders, the unrelenting solidity of his frame. His feet are planted firm and wide, and she can tell by the slope of his neck that he’s got his face tilted down, just barely. Poised for the oncoming storm.

(Her memory helpfully supplies: _What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?_ )

“Will do,” Karen shouts back to Micro, remembering herself. Her cheeks feel hot. The lights burn down on them all. “Thanks,” she adds, before they each shove their ear plugs back in.

She doesn’t know if Micro hears her at all, their back turning to her as they fish two drumsticks from the bucket at their side. They test out a few notes – snare, tom, kick, hi-hats. Rachel and Kathy do the same in turn. A few notes from each of them. Despite the earplugs, Karen feels Kathy’s bassline in her throat. The slam of Micro’s drums make the wood of the stage buck against the balls of Karen’s feet. Rachel’s guitar vibrates in the bones of Karen’s hands. 

Frank is the last to run through a final soundcheck. A quick countdown, brusque and stilted.

There’s an expectant pause while they wait for Quentin to signal them from the front of house sound booth, and Karen raises her camera on instinct; she watches Frank through the viewfinder, guidelines crossing over the back of his head as she takes aim.

It’s not long before Quentin gives them the go-ahead. Rachel releases the killswitch on her guitar, letting feedback run through the amplifiers. Frank turns his head a bare forty-five degrees over his shoulder, nodding to Micro. Karen’s ready. She gets the shot.

The sound of her shutter is drowned in a rapid hail of Micro beating the snare; a _pop-pop-pop_ that lasts a few bars. But Karen doesn’t look at them.

Her focus is pinned on Frank, who sways with the sound; slow, smooth movement running counter to the covering fire of Micro’s drums. His shoulders and head bob forward, the rest of his body remaining rooted to the stage. It’s a transmutation of his natural tic, heightened, swallowing Frank whole.

What’s most amazing, is the crowd mirrors him – shoulders pressed together, swaying in time, forward and back. A snake, charmed.

The moment is ephemeral, however. It disappears in a blaze: Rachel and Kathy crashing in with a sonic maelstrom as Frank’s hands come up around the microphone. She can see his throat twitch as he leans into it, shoulders pitching forward over the crowd as he takes a deep breath and _screams_.

There’s a moment, although brief, where Karen considers Micro’s warning: That this is _the best place for her to be right now_ , secure behind their kit. The view it affords her isn’t terrible. In fact, she clocks the specific way a spotlight highlights Kathy’s silhouette and thinks it’ll make a nice shot, but.

The thought is fleeting.

Frank’s growl brings him and the microphone – stand and all – low, close to the crowd. The human tide comes in, surging up to meet him, and in that moment Karen makes a decision: _fuck safety._

She ducks in front of Micro and books it to the other side of the stage. Her skull rattles as she settles in front of Kathy’s amp, crouches just under the neck of Kathy’s bass, and captures the moment: Frank’s hands in a vice grip around the joint where mic meets stand, desperate hands reaching out from the crowd to grab hold and cling: to the edge of the stage; Frank’s forearms; the length of the mic stand itself.

And then Frank’s pulling up and back. Kathy comes in close, Karen watching her boots move across the stage. Her tattoos seem to molt, changing color under the stage lights cutting in from every angle. Frank shifts, opening space for her at the front of the stage.

The body of her bass meets Frank’s side as they both lean into the mic, joining with the crowd to scream, “ _No rest, no rest, no rest, NO FUCKING ARRESTS._ ”

Karen just barely catches a shrill note of Kathy’s manic laughter as she spins away from Frank’s position at the head of Leatherneck’s formation. Her dark hair has begun to curl with sweat, compact frame lit up with the glare of spotlights and the frothing energy of the crowd, crushing itself to the front of the stage. Karen’s thumb flies against her shutter controls.

When Rachel’s guitar drops into a lower octave, tempo rising, Karen watches the pit _open_.

It’s surreal, to see it happen from the other side of things. Though Karen’s spent more time in front of a stage in the last four months than she has in the twenty-some-odd years prior, she’s always been careful: at the front of the pit, the stage at her chest and crowd at her back. Or – like in the handful of times she’s come to The Safehouse – well behind the crowd, the heart of the pit out of sight even as its effects ripple throughout the crush of people populating the floor.

All at once there are bodies in the air. The crowd carries a girl with black and highlighter yellow box braids from the rear to the front. She’s mouthing along to the lyrics, one splayed hand raised in the air. Karen finds herself racing forward, cutting in front of Kathy. Her toes curl over the lip of the stage as she snaps another photo, just before the girl’s set down a foot from the stage; a tangle of sweat-slick hands guiding her descent to the floor.

Frank lets out a painful, grinding howl, his voice ramping up the scale with an urgency that makes Karen think of storm sirens. She doubles back, Micro catching her eye as she turns. Their own eyes are wide behind orange frames. Briefly, Karen expects a scolding look. Instead, Micro shoots her a grin, wide and dimpled. 

They flip a drumstick and flash her a thumbs up as it tumbles through the air. Karen _laughs_ , a giddy, fierce feeling set loose in her chest. Micro’s topknot is showing signs of slipping free – their naturally haphazard curls made wilder by the damp heat of The Safehouse. Karen’s blouse sticks to her shoulder blades with sweat. She doesn’t care in the slightest.

Rachel plays with her whole body, each note demanding nothing less. She strikes a chord, bending the notes. Her hair remains in a knot at the back of her skull, a beacon of red pulling Karen’s focus. Karen grips her camera and slips into the corner between Kathy and Micro, crouching low beside Micro’s kit.

Pedal hits kick drum. Karen feels the weight of the notes against her cheek. She uses one hand to steady her lens, the other curled to take the shot, releasing the shutter just as Rachel swings her head back, Karen – hopefully – capturing the arc of her flame-colored hair.

Each instrument cuts out at once. Karen freezes, startling despite the fact that she’s seen Leatherneck play this song before; has even listened to it outside The Safehouse, nodding her head along on the subway. It shouldn’t take her by surprise.

Maybe it’s that the crowd goes silent too, a silence that cuts through Karen’s earplugs. The quiet goes against every rule of a punk show, enveloping The Safehouse in an eerie hush.

Karen’s body remembers to move before her brain does. She’s shuffling across the stage once more, ducking behind Micro (poised with a hand on their crash cymbal to keep it from rattling) and then racing to stand nearest Rachel. She plants herself behind Rachel’s amp, uses her height to lean over it, attempting to frame Micro and Frank in the same shot.

Frank is still. Karen notes the tracks of sweat running down his neck. His silver chain is visible, dipping beneath the stretched fabric of his collar. His chest heaves. 

Then he wrenches the mic from its stand, wrapping the cord around his right wrist before beginning, voice low. Dead. “Kill. The. Fucking. Lights.”

Quentin does. Karen does not move. She holds.

Then. Rachel, in the darkness, begins to play. Her guitar _bellows_ , carving sound out of the shadows. It’s different here, live, than on the album. Angrier, yes, but her bandmates give her space here – she wrenches a few more notes from the instrument, ringing out in the black.

Micro is next to join her. A steady march from their kick drum. When they strike, lights Karen never noticed before – hidden under an ever-so-slight rise in the platform of the stage directly beneath Micro’s drums – pulse. Karen goes to work, thumb pressing down on her shutter release before hauling over the transport lever, desperate to load new film in place, to secure the next shot: Frank, illuminated purely by the low lights under Micro’s kit; his shadow dreadful and dark.

Kathy rejoins a measure before Frank snarls into the mic. Leatherneck storms through the end of the song, and Karen burns through her roll of film.

She has to sprint back to her bag while Leatherneck transitions to the next track. Their sets don’t linger; they’re a rolling assault. Thunderous. They do not relent. Karen just hopes no one thinks she’s quitting when she turns away, hurtling through the stage door.

If any members of Killmonger are lingering in the green room, Karen doesn’t notice. She can still feel Rachel’s guitar in her throat. The music is dulled by her earplugs and the walls. But all the soundproofing in the world can’t mask the way the entire warehouse lurches with every beat.

Karen’s hands are practiced when they pull a new roll of film from her bag, reload her camera. ( _Never leave without a backup_ , her professor had drilled into her. _And a second backup to that_. She tucks the third roll in her bra, the reminder ringing in her ears when she initially turns to leave without it.)

Rachel is standing on Kathy’s amp when Karen returns to the set, a braided cable that runs from Rachel’s guitar to her own amp cutting a clear path across the stage. Kathy stands to the right of her amp. Neither woman has stopped playing, and there’s a glint in Kathy’s eyes that snags something in Karen’s head. Karen stops in the green room doorway, raises her camera, thinking of the shot –

When she notices Rachel’s expression. She’s staring intently at the crowd. She doesn’t blink.

Once, in elementary school, Karen’s class met a falconer. They’d just read _My Side of the Mountain_. She doesn’t remember much of the book, but she remembers the bird. The way it had stared at them all when its master had withdrawn its hood. 

The memory draws up an anachronism: Frank’s voice, supplying the phrase, _Threat assessment_. Karen holds her camera close to her chest and follows Rachel’s line of sight.

As she casts her attention out over the crowd, Karen sees Frank do the same. He has one foot pressed against a floor monitor. He hasn’t stopped screaming yet – though Karen can’t make out any lyrics, only a suspended roar. Frank holds the mic in one hand, cord still loosely wrapped around his wrist. His long-sleeved t-shirt is nearly soaked through with sweat, sleeves gathered at his elbows, fabric clinging to his skin. Karen can make out the line of his chain, a deep ‘v’ burned into his chest. 

Frank is watching something. It takes Karen a second to unravel the DNA of the crowd; to separate out the bodies, turn them into individual shapes. When she does, she sees it. 

Two, maybe three people in the middle of the crowd. Another moment for Karen to sift through the knotted center of the pit, make out who is smiling, slamming shoulders with another person – and who is drowning.

It’s a kid, his flannel torn in one shoulder, though it’s not the state of his clothes that isolate him. This crowd seems to honor tatters and rips like battle scars. The tear in his shirt is only part of the equation.

Here are the others:

Three men surrounding him, all taller. Crowding in. At first, Karen thinks it’s just the natural ebb and flow of the pit that slams their combined weight into the kid – he can’t be any older than Karen – pushing him further and further down.

There are pieces of the men that don’t quite fit. ( _One of these things is not like the other_ , a voice hums in the back of Karen’s head.) Their clothes – one of them wearing what looks to be a burgundy Members Only jacket, lifted straight out of a fucking John Hughes movie. Another’s in denim, nothing special. But there’s something too clean about it. Their shirts are button-downs, done all the way up the topmost button. Starched. 

The tallest of the three’s clean-shaven head – an even closer shave than Frank’s buzzcut – reflects the stage lights. The kid – dark hair, dark eyes, brown skin – glances back over his shoulder. He looks rattled, confused. Scared. Karen feels sick.

Her breath does something funny. _Skinheads. Nazis. Get a couple at every other goddamn show._ Honestly? Karen hadn’t really believed it. She’d trusted Frank not to lie to her. But trust and belief, she’s learning, are different. Seeing it now, arranging the pieces: starched shirts, cuffed pants, heavy boots, the now almost glaringly obvious _whiteness_ of the men surrounding the kid. It’s real.

There’s a moment when the revulsion and shock almost send the contents of Karen’s stomach scuttling up her throat. She clenches her hands around her camera, trying to ground herself. The textured plastic digs into her palms.

She grits her teeth. Everything around Karen vanishes, just for a moment. She’s remembering why she’s here. Why she carries a notebook and camera everywhere she goes. Why she pays for a stupid amount of cloud storage and her iTunes library is full of audio notes rather than music. _Hang them with the truth._  

Karen takes the shot. 

It’s then that Leatherneck springs into action. Karen almost misses it – their maneuvers are precise, and she only catches the instigating movement because she happens to be lowering her camera from her face. Frank rocks backwards, standing upright again. Karen watches his head tilt forward – looking for something on the ground. 

Frank’s foot comes down on Rachel’s abandoned pedalboard. Then: an angry rockslide of notes, Rachel and Kathy both switching time signature. It’s Rachel who shines through in the breakdown – her tone distorted, assailing. Micro and Kathy’s instruments decrescendo; the drums ease into a stifled rustle of cymbals, the bass serving as the foundation on which Rachel’s guitar builds itself.

The breakdown slows further. Karen is certain they’re stretching it, making the liminal heart of the song last far longer than the barely two minute long track allows on the record. Rachel populates the new space with noise and watches the pit. Karen watches with her.

Time feels at once suspended and heightened, like if she wanted, Karen could reach out and write notes in the margins between split-seconds. The chaos at the edges of the scene in front of her slips into a deep hush that has less to do with Karen’s earplugs than with the solid, anchoring sensation of her stockinged feet against the stage; the certainty of her grip on her Canon. For a cluster of seconds, she is utterly _present_.

Her eyes comb the crowd. The knot at the front of the pit doesn’t loosen.

Frank walks forward again, swallowing half the stage in two steps. Karen stares, transfixed, as he reaches up with the hand that isn’t holding the mic and jerks one of the low hanging stage lights onto the crowd, throwing the kid and the skins into the spotlight. Then he tugs on the cable attached to his microphone and stands, perched on the floor monitors once more. 

Karen watches what happens under the spotlight.

The biggest guy Karen has ever seen wades through the crowd – appearing from some unseen wing, as if conjured by Frank’s light. He’s wearing a polo shirt and doesn’t seem bothered by the sweat stains gathering at various spots on the thick material. Screen printed across his shoulders reads _MR. BUMPO._

With one massive hand, he grabs two of the guys by the collar. Their faces pop with surprise – they hadn’t seen Mr. Bumpo’s approach. Karen thinks it requires a special kind of obliviousness to miss that. The way their eyes bug out when their shirt collars press against their windpipes draws a cruel snort out of her, but she’s too distracted watching Mr. Bumpo grab the bald one – the ringleader of the three – around the waist to be shocked by her reaction. 

Just as the skinheads start to shout, Leatherneck erupts into sound. Frank steps back off the monitor and jerks the stage light back into place. Karen loses sight of the boy. 

Rachel jumps off Kathy’s amp; Frank doubles over, howling. The crowd spits forth a girl, her hijab pinned firmly in place over a black shirt that reads _THE FUTURE IS FEMALE_ in blazing, white script. She rocks up on her tiptoes to bow her head towards Frank’s, both screaming, _“These hands hold nothing! These lungs are empty!”_

Karen scuttles out of the doorway and curls against the nearest amplifier, leaning on it for balance as she snaps the photo: Frank and the girl sharing the mic for one last stanza. 

As the verse ends, Frank pulls himself upright. The instruments rage around him. He steps backwards, holds the mic close to his chest and rocks back and forth as he intones, “Our. Love. Never dies.”

His grip on the mic remains tight even as the instruments cut out. If Karen were to tilt her head sideways, she could read his bruised knuckles: _PUNISHER_. She flips her camera and snaps the photo, just as Micro counts them into their next song.

By the time Leatherneck’s set is coming to a close four songs later, Karen’s changing film faster than she ever has before, desperately trying to avoid exposing the rolls to the lights of The Safehouse without sacrificing precious stage time. She’s breathless, hunched over herself behind Rachel’s amp once more. Her heart slams in her chest, just out of step with the vibration of Rachel’s guitar against Karen’s spine, as if her pulse is racing to catch up. She’s scrambling to get her third roll of the night loaded before they transition into “I Am Going To Kill The President Of The United States” – the song they’ve ended every show with, as far as Karen’s seen. It hasn’t come up on the setlist yet tonight and, if she were a betting woman, Karen would guess its arrival tonight will be quick and furious.

The skins haven’t reappeared, and Karen hasn’t seen the kid they were beating on either. But she knows Leatherneck is watching.

She finishes switching out her film just in time, Micro’s sticks snapping together somewhere to Karen’s left.

Frank’s weight sways from one leg to the other. One large hand reaches up. Karen watches the microphone, glinting silver under the lights, flip through the air, cable shooting upwards after it like a shadow. Her eyes lock on the motion, her camera briefly becoming an afterthought. Frank lurches forward at the last second and catches the cord on his neck.

The black cable is stark against Frank’s skin, pulling tight as it wraps around his throat before he catches the mic in one hand. It’s a single continuous motion, nearly impossible to capture even if Karen wasn’t distracted. The arc of the movement finishes with Frank surging forward, his throat straining against the cord, both hands clasped around the mic now.

_“If this is the front line, there’s no hope for the world.”_

Kathy climbs atop Micro’s kick drum, and their round face splits with a grin, bright eyes sparking as Kathy leans in to shout with them, _“Devils! We’re raised by devils!”_

Karen’s too busy photographing Micro and Kathy to notice exactly when the crowd surfers begin to appear. By the time she sees them, the first is already pulling themselves onstage. They come like the tide: one in, one out. Never lingering onstage for long. The pacing of the song doesn’t allow it.

Even the brick seems to shake as the room erupts, Frank leading them all into the chorus: _“MURDERED FASCISTS MAKE NO NOISE.”_

Leatherneck is building a house of cards. Micro’s drums are so heavy Karen can see sweat dripping from their brow onto the skin of their snare. Under that comes the stomp of Kathy’s bassline, anchoring the song amid the shriek Rachel wrings out from her Gibson. All of this barely reaches Karen’s ears over the crowd, currently growling out the final verse with Frank. 

The end of the song slams into Karen’s belly, knocking her windpipe clear. It’s like someone’s switched the power off; a final snarl courtesy of Rachel’s guitar and it’s over. Though Karen’s listened to the song before – even seen it live, more than once – her mouth opens and closes, surprised, gulping down air as the lights blink out.

Her back sticks to the far wall, having perched to snap a final photo of the full band from behind. She’d gotten the shot. But now, with the lights off and the crowd still buzzing through her earplugs, Karen is frozen.

Three fingers press into her shoulder.

Karen jumps, turning to the point of contact. On her left, grey eyes gather what very little light there is, flashing in the sudden dark. Karen’s own eyes widen in surprise. Her fingers clench tight around her camera. They stare at each other for a moment before Karen yanks her earplugs out, realizing that if Rachel’s trying to tell her something, Karen sure as shit can’t hear it.

“C’mon,” Rachel says. Her tone brooks no argument.

The stage creaks as they move. Through the balls of her feet, Karen can feel the others’ footsteps, the sound of them drowned out by the crowd’s excited chattering. Carefully picking her way across the stage, Karen’s eyes acclimate to the low light enough to follow the movement of Rachel’s bright hair over the threshold into the green room.

Light floods Karen’s senses. She winces, blinking spots out of her periphery.

As her vision clears, Leatherneck materializes in the room before her. Micro is crouched on the floor, their hair hanging in their eyes, pulled loose from its knot. They’re packing Kathy’s pedalboard away into a carrying case. Rachel walks over to them and Micro reaches up to knock knuckles with her without a word. Karen can see a smile tug at the corner of Rachel’s narrow mouth.

On the other side of the couch, Kathy and Frank stand close. She holds her bass in one hand, the large body of it obscured by the furniture. With her free hand, Kathy reaches up and grips the back of Frank’s head and for a brief, hysterical moment, Karen thinks she’s going to _kiss_ him before Kathy raises up on her tiptoes and knocks her forehead into Frank’s, grinning wildly.

Frank grunts in reply, his mouth twitching into a facsimile smile. As Kathy pulls down from the contact, her hand sliding away from the back of Frank’s head, she raps a closed fist against Frank’s chest, just the once. Then Kathy grunts too, low and teasing. Karen stares, tries to parse the wordless exchange as Frank sways forward – following Kathy’s movement as she pulls away.

“Well reporter,” Rachel says, dragging Karen’s attention from Frank and Kathy. She turns to see Rachel seated on the edge of the couch, placing her Gibson into its case at her feet. “You get what you needed?”

All the panic Karen had set aside comes flooding back. She lied about her piece. And Leatherneck _knows_. Her spine goes ramrod straight, breath quickening in her throat; her hands feel cold, a disconcerting sensation as her face heats at the same moment. Automatically, her eyes return to Frank – who’s pulling a water bottle from the case under the card table, oblivious.

The information slams into her with renewed force: _Frank_ knows. He knows she lied. And his response? A teasing smirk. Throwing her into their show. _What the fuck?_  

“Karen.” The sound of her name makes her spine jerk. Rachel stares, one eyebrow arched in suspicion.

Karen reaches to brush her hair back from her face only to remember that she has it tied up. With burning cheeks she presses her fingertips into her scalp and returns Rachel’s gaze.

“Uh, yeah,” Karen stammers. With an abrupt jerk of her hand, she tugs her hair free of its bun. Some of the tension ekes from her shoulders as it falls around her face in thick waves. She can feel some strands cling to the sweat on the back of her neck, the side of her throat. Karen takes a deep breath. “I think so.”

Rachel’s eyes are narrow. She nods. (She so fucking knows; even _Rachel_ is in on the joke. Karen kicks herself for getting lost in her thoughts. For being stupid enough to _lie_ to their _faces_.) “Good.” She pushes up from the couch, her guitar safe in its case. She snatches up the pedalboard Micro’s packed away for good measure, giving Karen a final once-over before elbowing Kathy. “Let’s get this shit put away,” she says, indicating Kathy’s bass with a jerk of her chin.

Frank walks over as Kathy and Rachel – gear in hand – exit the room. He drops down on the couch beside Rachel’s abandoned spot. The chain around his neck has been pulled free of his henley; it shifts against Frank’s chest, swinging from side to side when he leans forward, forearms braced against his thighs.

The sight of him cows the embarrassment that’s drawn itself up just under Karen’s skin. Her molars grind together in a surge of frustration. “Was that some kind of test?” she demands, speaking before she thinks better of it.

Frank’s head jerks upward. His eyes are slightly unfocused. He squints, looking her up and down, the scrutiny barely dampened by his hazy expression. Karen crosses her arms over her chest all the same, camera hanging from one hand.

Frank looks down, stares at the bottle in his hand for a few seconds before unscrewing the lid and taking a long pull, looking back up at Karen as he does. He swallows. Karen watches his adam’s apple bob once, twice. Frank pulls the bottle from his lips, exhaling heavily. He doesn’t say anything.

“Well?” Karen prompts. She can sense Micro stilling across the room, still crouched on the floor; can feel them pretending not to pay attention to her and Frank’s little staring contest. She refuses to look at them, stays focused on the task at hand. Frank begins to raise his right hand to his face, and Karen grits her teeth, steeling herself for what happens next. 

Frank Castle _laughs_.

The sound bursts out of him in the second before his hand reaches his mouth. He crooks his index finger, pressing the knuckle against his lips and raising his eyebrows. There’s something at once smug and bashful about the gesture, joining with the high note in his laughter to make Frank seem altogether younger. For a second, Karen forgets her irritation, too caught up in the sight of Frank acting… _silly_.

Her mouth opens and closes. She temporizes. Confusion knocks the wind out of her chest. She swallows through it, managing to scrape out, “What?”

“You think Lieberman didn’t have your name on that…that. Google. That thing that keeps tabs –”

“Google alerts,” Micro squeaks from their corner, just across the room from Karen. Finally, Karen tows her gaze towards them. They’re examining their bucket of drumsticks with such intense diligence it’s obvious immediately how hard they’ve been trying to ignore Karen’s tantrum. They’re fighting back laughter, though, and it’s impossible to discern whether it’s at Frank or Karen’s expense. She flushes all over again, cheeks reaching solar flare levels of heat. Karen thinks she sees tears in Micro’s eyes.

“That,” Frank says. He thrusts the water bottle in Micro’s direction before bringing it to his mouth and taking another deep swallow, his lips still tilted up, the most prolonged smile Karen’s ever gotten from Frank.

She remembers the last time she’d seen him right after a show; there’d been the same wrung-out quality, the same disarming youthfulness. For the first time, Karen thinks she’s beginning to truly understand what this – the music, the crowd, the very act of playing – does for Frank. That notwithstanding bum knees and bad shoulders, _this_ is how he looks after himself.

“Sorry, Karen,” Micro mumbles from their position on the floor. Their voice – normally reedy, prone to cracking – is sheepish. When Karen returns her attention to them, Micro’s blue eyes are clear and earnest behind their glasses. “Promise we didn’t say yes just to fuck with you.” Micro cups the bundle of drumsticks between two hands, making sure they’re all facing the same way before releasing them slowly, sending them clattering against the plastic walls of the bucket. They push their glasses up their short nose, chipped nail polish glittering in the low light. “We did _want_ you to photograph the show.”

Karen stares. Micro seems genuinely apologetic; affected by Karen’s response, the fervor of it. She drops her gaze from both Micro and Frank, to her toes curling against the floor. Her throat itches, a discomfiting sensation pushing down on her diaphragm. She feels too big for her skin, like she’s wearing clothes that don’t quite fit and everyone’s staring. She rubs her bicep.

“Ain’t what she’s talkin’ about,” Frank responds, eyes skidding along the floor before landing on Micro. His rolled-in-gravel voice is steady. Pulls Karen’s attention back up. “Mighta mentioned Henderson to her.”

“Hender–… _Gunner?”_  Micro’s eyes pop wide, an incredulous smile stealing across their face.

Karen huffs. When she looks back to Frank, he’s got his knuckle pressed against his mouth again, gaze trained on the floor between her and Micro. The hand drops to Frank’s lap when Micro breaks into what can only be described as a _giggle fit_.

It’s just enough to make her feel like she’s standing on the other side of an insurmountable gulf. She’s missing something and she hates it so much her stomach clenches. “What’s so funny?” she demands, her eyes narrowing. Her cheeks feel tight, the muscles of her mouth heavy.

“Jesus Christ.” Frank’s voice is low, aimed at his knees as he ducks his head and screws the lid back on the plastic bottle in his hands. “You wanna try an’ explain how I’m the asshole here?” He sits up, slides back on the cushions; bounces slightly when his shoulders hit the back of the couch.

Frank looks up at her, jaw hanging. His eyes flick down from Karen’s, tracing from her jaw to her hairline. The expression is exaggerated, gaze narrowed in mock skepticism; playing up his curiosity because Frank _knows_ she doesn’t have a good answer.

Micro’s laughter hits a particularly shrill note; inevitably, Karen is reminded of Kathy. She rolls her eyes.

Before she can reply, Rachel and Kathy are back through the door. They’re each armed with a box; familiar Sharpie-scrawl on the sides. The boxes Karen helped Kathy with when she’d first arrived, what feels like eons ago.

“You still ain’t got shoes on, Legs?” Kathy asks, chin jerking down towards her stockinged feet. Heat suffuses the nape of Karen’s neck; the cement floor is bumpy and cool through her tights. She curls her toes. Kathy’s thin, impish eyebrows arch when she meets Karen’s eyes. At some point during her and Rachel’s absence, she’s pulled her hair back: a small ponytail gathered at the back of her head and choppy, too-short layers curling to frame her face. “Figure we oughta head out, talk shop n’ shit.” Kathy seems entirely unimpressed by Micro’s hysterics or Frank’s taunting expression.

Right. _Right_. They’re supposed to discuss the logistics of Karen touring with them. Karen, who can’t tell if she’s pissed or just fucking embarrassed. On tour. With Leatherneck. _Fuck_.

She can’t let them knock her entirely off balance. Karen ducks down, turning to where she’d left her bag and situating her camera in its rightful place. As she does, Karen checks to make sure the brownie Joan had given her is still secure, wrapped in a napkin to prevent it crumbling into her Canon’s knobs and buttons. She balances on one leg, alternating between the left and right as she slips her heels back on – her perspective on the green room altering with the regained height. Straightening, she hears Kathy snort gently, once. 

When Karen looks up, Kathy’s following Rachel to the far side of the room. They set down the boxes, Rachel brushing her palms against her thighs when she draws back up to her full height. “Yours?” she asks, expectant gaze landing on Frank.

A beat of silence. Neither Kathy nor Micro interrupt the wordless exchange that follows. When it’s finished, Frank supplies the room with an abrupt nod, raising his left hand to his face. As if clearing his head, he blinks hard and brushes his thumb across his nose; hand in a loose fist, knuckles flashing _SHER_ in worn black ink. “Let’s go.” He hoists himself up off the couch, exhaling heavily as he does. 

Karen watches Rachel cast a perfunctory, searching look about the green room, ostensibly making sure everything’s in order. Kathy lingers at the door, eyes on Frank as he crosses over to meet her. Karen secures the strap of her bag across her torso and heads for the door.

“Hey.” Micro’s tenor is soft. They’ve hung back, letting Frank exit with Kathy and Rachel first. They keep in step with Karen, taking two strides for each one of hers – she slows when she realizes, noting that she’s got at least a foot of height on Micro, minimum. Karen tilts her head, looks down at them; their eyes are very blue, and equally sincere. “I wasn’t laughing at you back there, I swear.”

“O-kay,” Karen breathes. She looks forward, eyes landing on Rachel’s bouncing red ponytail as they weave their way through The Safehouse – now empty, save for what Karen supposes counts as the venue staff: Spacker Dave and Quentin, conversing quietly beside the cashbox – now perched on the bartop, Dave’s card table having been broken down; Sarah behind the bar, rinsing out glasses; Joan and Mr. Bumpo folding chairs and breaking down tables on the opposite side of the wide room. 

“Seriously,” Micro continues. “I just can’t believe…” They cut themselves off. It’s enough to hook Karen’s interest. She peers back down at them and Micro runs a hand through their mass of tangled curls and sweat; their fingertips come away stained violet. “Shit,” they mutter, sighing.

Another pause. Then: “Thank you for including Frank’s full name in your piece, by the way.”

Karen blinks. “What?” she asks, slowing to a stop.

Micro stills two steps ahead of her, looks back over their shoulder. The deep dimple in their round left cheek flashes. A smile. (Affection alights in her middle, puts the lingering wariness thrumming through her to rest. Despite the utter petty humiliation of it all, something in Karen reaches out for the smile and latches on.) They backtrack two steps; the gesture makes a small, cough-shaped laugh spout from Karen’s chest. Micro’s Docs squeak against the venue floor.

“You know Frank,” Micro says when they’re beside her again. Their voice is still quiet; emphatic without being loud. Their eyes go wide and gravely serious behind their colored glasses. “I’ve known for years, but he won’t say anything about it. I’ve been dying with this forbidden knowledge.” They pause, for what Karen figures is dramatic effect. “ _Years_ , Karen.”

Another half-laugh emerges. She knows her mouth is hanging open a little, curved into a befuddled smile. “I – you’re welcome?”

A response from Micro is silenced by Frank’s voice cutting across the room. “You need an invitation, Lieberman?”

Karen’s head jerks up at the roughness of his voice. It’s even lower, she’s noticed, right after a show. Bruised from the abuse. He’s standing in The Safehouse’s front doorway, Rachel and Kathy just over the threshold. She and Micro are only a few yards or so behind, but the distance is untenable for Frank, apparently.

His eyes meet Karen’s. He angles his body, preparing to usher the two of them through the open door.

“Yeah, I need to be delivered by courier pigeon, we get it,” Micro retorts, shuffling faster to cross the distance. Karen follows as Micro adds, “I can call a guy if you need one.” 

For the second time tonight, Frank laughs. It’s quieter than the first, but more buoyant. A _giggle_ , if Karen were willing to assign the word to Frank; a two syllable sound that punctuates Frank’s lips cracking into a sharp, crooked smile. _Naha-ha._

This is Frank Castle when he is happy. Karen stares when she follows them through the doors, propped open momentarily by Micro as Frank joins Kathy and Rachel on the sidewalk outside. Her gaze zeroes in on a mottled yellow and green bruise high on Frank’s cheekbone before he turns away from her fully to walk ahead. The bruise disappears, and Karen’s supplied instead with a view of a fresh scab on the back of Frank’s neck, what looks to be a fleck of dried blood. 

 _Must have happened during the show_ , Karen notes. She chews the inside of her lip.

They exit out the side door, stepping into the alley behind the building. The atmosphere of the Kitchen is dreamlike after the cramped heat and fury of The Safehouse, fresh air rushing to Karen’s head. The sounds of the city seem slowed down; the susurrus of water flowing in the Hudson, hum of uptown traffic muted by the early-late hour and the warehouse of solid brick cordoning off Karen and Leatherneck from the rest of the city. The old warehouse is at the rear of Hell’s Kitchen, braced against the water and the old docks. It spares them from any light pollution coming off the Javits Center – a metal and glass affront to man, built to be the ‘jewel’ of New York City convention centers. They’re left in the alleyway with the glow of a single, motion-activated bulb instead. No one speaks. Karen takes an anchoring breath. 

The transitory, oddly idyllic calm only lasts a moment before they hear it: a muted _thunk_ , followed by a sharp inhale. Something skidding over gravel. “I didn’t!” a voice – high enough to crack; _afraid_ – cries. “Please! I didn’t say anything.”

“Spic’s gotta learn, Lance,” a different voice, calmer than it has any right to be. Then a swish, followed by another heavy sound — two solid masses connecting. When she hears a pained yelp, Karen’s thoughts pop into focus: _someone’s in danger._

Leatherneck is moving before she is. Four sets of feet break into a jog. Karen follows, willing her heels to keep from skidding on uneven cement. They round the corner into the connecting alley – between The Safehouse and the next building. The narrow space is better lit, streetlamps and light from a storefront next door throwing the scene before Karen into sharp relief.

In front of Leatherneck – who have fanned out, filling the width of the alley with Frank in the middle, Rachel and Kathy on either side and Micro ending their lineup on the far right – are four men. One lies on the ground. Karen can’t see his face, but she can hear the wet, labored sound of his breathing.

The remaining three stand in a near mirror image to Leatherneck. White. Pressed clothes. Collars buttoned all the way to the top. The tallest of the three has a clean-shaven head.

Karen recognizes them instantly: the skinheads from the show. She guesses the guy on the ground is the kid they’d been messing with. Immediately, she feels guilty for losing track of the kid; if only she’d seen where he’d gone, after Mr. Bumpo pulled them out–

“Knock it off.” Frank’s voice reaches for the sewers: lower than guttural and soft-spoken in a way that paralyzes the air. He’s stone-still, warning writ clear through the line of his shoulders, his hands fisted loosely at his sides.

For a moment, when absolutely nothing happens, Karen is glad she can’t see Frank’s eyes. 

The kid on the ground scrabbles around on his hands and knees, turning and peering up at Leatherneck with wide, panicked eyes. His lip is split, blood dripping down his chin and onto his shirt. Karen can see gravel embedded in his cheek. 

As for the skinheads, their gazes zero in on Frank. One – on the left, with frizzy curls that reach his chin – has enough sense to let an ounce of fear inch into his expression. “Shit,” he breathes. 

The other two, however, snicker. The ringleader – _Lance_ , Karen’s brain offers, somehow still churning, studying – smirks. “Oh, this night just keeps gettin’ better and better,” he says. “Look who it is: Captain Batshit.”

Frank doesn’t move. Neither do Kathy or Rachel. Micro shifts their weight at the end of the lineup – Karen steps forward unconsciously, seeking out a clearer view of Micro’s profile. Their expression is one of concern couched in determination. 

Lance takes a couple long strides forward, overconfident in a way that might make Karen roll her eyes if she could manage to tear her gaze from what’s unfolding in front of her for a second. 

A beat after Lance starts moving, Frank lunges. He clears the yard’s length of distance between them in a blink, grabs Lance by the juncture between his neck and shoulder and slams his own forehead into the bridge of the skinhead’s nose.

The scene falls apart.

Lance screams, tries to pull free. As he does, his friends surge forward, rushing Frank–

Only to be caught by Kathy and Rachel. While Frank’s fist pulls back and whips forward into Lance’s cheekbone (punctuated by a sickening crunch), Rachel hits the curly-haired one with a punch to the gut, her red hair cutting through the air like silk as she ducks a blow meant for her head. Kathy, meanwhile, catches her goon by the shoulders, yanking him down to drive her knee into his chest. As he stumbles backward, she snaps out her leg to kick him in the balls.

The alley fills with the assorted sounds of boots and fists hitting flesh. Karen almost misses Micro jump forward, pulling the kid up off the ground by the arms before shuffling them back towards Karen, out of harm’s way. 

Unthinking, Karen steps towards the pair. Her hands feel heavy, twitching at her sides. She wants to do something – _anything_. Her thoughts cycle and switch. Memory crashes into the present: the kid’s just a _kid_ , can’t be any older than nineteen, just a handful of years older than Kevin – and, and, and, he’s _bleeding_ and Karen’s hands won’t stop shaking.

“Are you okay?” Micro asks, gentle. They help the boy over to the exterior wall of The Safehouse, letting him lean against the brick for support. They reach into their backpack – teal, decked out in patches and pins – and pull out a small plastic case. Red cross on the cover. A first aid kit. Micro clicks it open, talking to the kid again – saying something low and soothing that Karen doesn’t hear. The sounds of feet scrabbling against gravel pull her attention away, stopping her a few paces from Micro and the kid. 

When she pivots on the balls of her feet, the layout of the fight has shifted again. No backs are to Karen now – both Leatherneck and the skinheads stand parallel, offering Karen clean views of their profiles. 

She side-steps unconsciously, farther from Micro and the kid – whose own hands are shaking, dark hair glossy with sweat. From the new position, Karen can see Leatherneck’s faces in three-quarter view.

It’s like animals circling one another. Loose gravel and concrete skids out from underneath combat boots – tactical for Leatherneck, straight-laced Doc Martens for the skinheads. Momentarily Karen is struck by the contrast between the well-worn folds in Leatherneck’s boots and the skinheads’ stiff, polished leather.

Another scream snaps Karen’s attention back to the fore. “Stay back!” It’s a skin speaking, the one with a buzzcut, denim jacket – now stained dark red on the collar, as he bleeds from the corner of his mouth. Lance stands beside him, his cheekbone shining milky white through torn red and purple skin. When Karen realizes what’s she’s looking at – bone peeking through drooping flesh – she feels her last meal surge up against her diaphragm. The curly-haired guy is on Denim Jacket’s other side, one arm wrapped around his middle. He’s stooped over slightly.

Kathy snickers in reply. She’s crouched low, feet set wide – a tigress waiting to pounce.

Karen doesn’t notice that Denim Jacket’s got one hand in his pocket until he pulls a knife from it, the blade making a _shink!_ sound as it’s flipped open. Her heart slams against her ribs. Cold washes over her skin, the baby hairs on her arms standing upright. She watches as Frank moves forward as if in slow motion – her senses cataloguing every moment in a kind of hyper-lucid panic.  

As Frank closes the distance, the knife-wielder moves in time. Frank raises his left arm – maybe to knock the knife away? Karen can’t be sure.

She hears it first. A wet sound, that’s all. No grunt from Frank. No cry from his assailant.

When she gets a clear look, the hilt of the knife protrudes from Frank’s forearm. Blood, shiny under the streetlights’ glow, trickles from beneath the stiletto’s release. Dizziness hits Karen square between the eyes – Frank’s been _stabbed_.

No one moves. Even Kathy, her arm now constricted around the curly haired guy’s neck, is stock-still. Denim Jacket and his friends stare, their faces frozen into identical masks of shock. Distantly, Karen’s aware that she has the same look on her face. They all stare at the knife, waiting for the next move. 

She can hear Frank’s breath rattling, notices he’s bleeding from one nostril. The blood drips onto his mouth, down to the pout of his bottom lip. A red smear across his chin. His pupils are blown, pitch-black and whale eyed.

He wraps his right hand around the knife’s handle, letters on his knuckles obscured by blood that Karen’s certain isn’t Frank’s. His fingers flex on the hilt, and then –

Frank pulls the blade from his forearm.

The sound is awful; a damp _slick_ where Karen can hear metal pulling through cleanly sliced skin. She clenches her jaw, willing the bile that rises up again to stay in her throat.  

The kid isn’t so lucky. He vomits on his own shoes. The smell burns Karen’s sinuses, mingling with the scent of blood. Micro’s voice is a low mumble, keeping the kid calm. She grinds her teeth, redoubling her efforts to muscle down her own sick.

Everyone stares. Somehow, in this moment, Frank seems taller. Unnaturally so. The dark corners of the alleyway cling to him, framing the dreadful silence of the moment. Blood drips from Frank’s arm onto the cement. Karen hears, instead, the squelch of blood in her living room carpet; she’s twenty-one all over again and she can’t breathe.

Then, movement. Frank adjusts his grip on the knife, flipping the blade against his wrist and slamming the flat of his right forearm and elbow into the chest of the skinhead still frozen before him. The guy falls to the ground just as Kathy launches herself backwards, throwing both herself and the one she’s still got trapped in the crook of her arm against the brick of the building neighboring The Safehouse.

Karen flinches, their tangled forms rushing past her so fast and close that it stirs her hair, sends a stray lock flying against her mouth. They crash into the wall with a heavy sound. Kathy _growls_ , releasing his neck from the headlock and raising the flat of her free hand up simultaneously, connecting with his face and slamming his head into the wall with a decisive _crack_. He crumples at her feet.

To Karen’s right, Rachel ducks and feints as Lance pushes her back against The Safehouse. Rachel’s mouth is set in a hard line, and Karen can see a bruise blooming on her jaw. She’s favoring one leg, maneuvering to keep the bulk of her weight off the opposite ankle.

When Rachel’s shoulders hit the wall, her assailant rocks back to slam a fist into her face. Except before he can, a large hand wraps around his shoulder – bloodied _SHER_ curling so tight the fabric of his jacket crinkles – and turns him around.  

Frank doesn’t speak. He waits a beat, for Lance to face him fully. Karen stares at his wrecked face, watches his upper lip curl, momentarily baring bloodstained teeth. When the two men lock eyes, Frank slams his fist into the other’s face. The blow connects precisely where it had before – where Frank’s knuckles split his cheek open. The bone crunches again. Shatters. Karen’s tongue pushes against the roof of her mouth in a desperate bid to hold back vomit. The cloying scent of blood – coppery and sharp – intensifies.  She presses a hand over her lips, nostrils flaring.

Lance falls, limp, into Rachel. She nudges him off, lifting her knee like she’s about to bounce a soccer ball off of it, and finishes with a kick, the heel of her boot connecting with the small of his back. His nose makes a snapping sound as he falls face first to the ground. He doesn’t get back up.

There are more wet, scraping sounds. “Lance!” the one who’d pulled the knife shouts. Karen’s attention jerks to him. He’s crawling across the ground, hand outreached, scrabbling for where Frank had discarded the knife –

Frank takes two steps, turning on his heel. He stoops down on one knee, as calm as if he were bending down to work on a piece of audio equipment at The Chaste. He grabs the guy’s hand and wrist just as his grip closes around the knife.

The corner of Frank’s mouth twitches as he jerks the skinhead’s arm straight up. It’s the only sign of anger on his face. The following _snap_ is enough to make Karen gag, her mouth open against her palm. Frank breaks the skinhead’s arm easily, something that can only be bone jutting unnaturally against the inside of the poor fuck’s denim sleeve at the elbow. He _screams_ , hand opening, dropping the knife into Frank’s waiting palm.

Frank grasps the knife in one hand. The other wraps around the back of the man’s head before Frank slams it into the concrete. When he pulls it back up, his face is a bloody pulp, eyes closed. Passed out like the rest. Still, Frank rears the guy’s head back, moving to do it again– 

“Hey.” Rachel’s hand catches Frank’s elbow before he can smash the skinhead’s face into the ground a second time. Her voice is practically a whisper. “It’s over.” 

Karen watches, her hand still covering her mouth, unable to draw enough air into her lungs as Frank turns his gaze up to Rachel’s. His tawny eyes are framed by bruises and fresh blood. They’re also wide, far away – like after a set, only wrong. One foot in the here and now, the other somewhere else. Somewhere Karen never wants to go again.

Frank grunts. Nods. Releases the man’s head, setting it down without force.

 _“Whoo!”_ Kathy whistles as Frank rises. She’s bouncing on the balls of her feet like a boxer. Her grin is dimpled and manic. She rolls her shoulders, dirt and gravel embedded in her bared skin. She doesn’t seem to notice.

“You – you –“ the kid starts. His voice is shaking. He stares up at Leatherneck with massive brown eyes. There’s a roundness to his cheeks that makes him look affectingly young. Karen notices a bit of shine to the cuts on his cheek – liquid bandages. Micro is sliding their first aid kit back into their bag, clearing their throat.

“You okay?” Rachel asks. She’s moved to the front of Leatherneck’s formation, Frank and Kathy flanking her a few paces back. Karen thinks she spots a hitch in her step.

“Y-yeah,” the kid breathes, giving them all a series of emphatic nods. There’s bit of vomit on the corner of his mouth, smeared in his wispy facial hair. 

“Good,” Rachel says. She jerks her head over her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”

In stunned silence, Karen follows along with the kid and Micro at the rear of the arrow-shaped formation Leatherneck falls into, skirting around Lance’s prone body to do so. A shallow lake of blood forms, his pale head at the center. Karen freezes. The scene changes. For a moment, the air splits open; she’s no longer standing in an alley on a muggy night in Hell’s Kitchen, but in another state, another summer. A breeze, fresh and warm, carrying with it the scent of pine.

Micro’s voice reaches her, then. She can’t make out the words, but it’s enough to collapse the memory, call Karen back to the city around her. She starts moving again, the tap of her heels distinct in the sudden quiet. She checks over her shoulder to make sure the three men are still breathing.

When they’re out of the alley and down the block from The Safehouse, Rachel slows. Frank’s breath is still audible, a deep rattle – like a radiator turned on in the winter.

Karen stops before Micro and the kid and looks to Rachel. She raises her chin as Rachel gives her a steely once-over. Rachel’s study of her is thorough. She wants to crawl under the sewer cap she’s standing on, rolling her shoulders back when their eyes meet. Her knees lock. She’s unwilling to telegraph that her chest feels fragile; as though something inside her’s been torn loose and is now leaking fuel.

“I’m gonna get Donny home,” Micro says as they slow to a stop at the street corner they’ve all congregated around. The kid still looks ashen, and a little unsteady on his feet.

“You don’t gotta do that, I’m out in Queens with my grandma, I–” Donny interjects, apologetic. His posture is stooped, curled in on itself. Shamed. 

“S’just how we roll, sorry,” Micro replies with a smile. They reach around to the water bottle pocket on the side of their backpack and withdraw a package of Twizzlers, pulling one out and offering it to Donny. “Here.” 

Distracted by the offer of candy, Donny shuts up and accepts. Micro continues, looking over Rachel’s shoulder at Frank. Karen notes the concern that weighs down Micro’s thick, dark eyebrows. “You’ll get the old man home?” they ask, locking eyes with Rachel. Their tone is thin, resigned in a way that speaks to years of tamping down worry.

Rachel nods in reply.

“Legs n’ I’ll walk ya, Rach,” Kathy adds, meeting Karen’s gaze. There’s a dare in Kathy’s sharp eyes. Karen looks from her to Frank – whose own gaze is trained on the ground. 

Micro nods and touches Donny’s elbow reassuringly, prompting him to follow as they walk through the group in the direction of Times Square.

As Donny passes Frank, he adds – so sincere it almost makes Karen wince – “I knew you wasn’t a retard.” He pauses, and looks around the group once more. “Thanks.” 

Frank doesn’t react. There’s a beat of uncomfortable silence.

“Just get home, kid,” Kathy says flatly.

Donny’s face falls, lines appearing in his round cheeks when he looks away. He twirls Micro’s gift Twizzler in his hand before turning and following them towards the lights of central Manhattan.

“Frank’s place is up this way,” Kathy says, once Micro and Donny are clear of earshot. It takes Karen a beat to realize Kathy’s speaking to her. When she finally turns her head towards Kathy, the shorter woman jerks her head down the block intersecting with The Safehouse’s street. There’s a long row of buildings in various states of disrepair: a handful of corner bodegas, multilingual signs still lit in neon despite the hour; a dive bar two blocks down, with a lone, miserable-looking hot dog vendor out front.

Rachel and Frank are already halfway down the block. Karen swallows and nods to Kathy. “Okay.”

Kathy walks quickly, surprising Karen into a half-jog to keep up with her despite their height difference. They slow when they’ve caught up with Rachel and Frank, who hang a right four blocks down.

The building they stop at doesn’t look all that different from Karen’s. Plain brick. Stoop. Shitty awning over the steps proclaiming the address number. Handful of buzzers and mail slots nestled against the doorframe.

What is surprising, despite the night Karen’s had, is that Rachel doesn’t ask Frank for his keys. Instead, she withdraws her own keyring – worn blue paracord fob and heavy duty carabiner swinging from it as she does – and opens the door with her own set of keys. Frank walks in first, but lets Rachel take the lead in the foyer.

They walk single-file up the stairwell, Karen falling in between Frank and Kathy, Frank dripping blood on the steps – which are a surprisingly pristine white linoleum, as though they’d been buffed and shined only hours before. Frank’s red-black blood shatters the illusion.

The four of them march up, up. Four flights, all in silence. Tension lingers in Karen’s neck and shoulders, burning between her scapulae; some part of her convinced that if someone were to touch her, she’d snap like an overtightened string. The ache reaches her knees (locked for too long), her ankles, the balls of her feet. She tries not to fixate on it, focusing instead on the click of her heels against the metal stops wrapped around the edge of each step.

They turn left out of the stairwell. Again, Rachel uses her own key to let them into the apartment. It’s dark when they pile through the door; in the wall to their left, two uncurtained windows funnel ambient light into the apartment from outside. A card table is shoved just beneath the window farthest from the door; it’s piled high with flyers and zines, a task lamp, and what looks like a tool bag for Frank’s work gear.

Because this is _Frank’s apartment_. The novelty of the experience does little to slow the hammering of Karen’s heart.

Kathy steps out from behind Karen, moving into the apartment proper. A light switches on. Karen’s attention swings upward in surprise – there’s a single bare bulb on the ceiling, but it does a serviceable job illuminating the studio.

It’s sparse. Small, but not claustrophobically so. Karen lingers by the door and looks to Kathy, standing in the small kitchenette to the left of the door, the first of Frank’s two windows situated directly above the kitchen sink. The sink is industrial, the kind Karen’s mom had in the basement laundry room back home – where she’d scrub grass stains out of Karen and Kevin’s softball and baseball uniforms when they were kids. Frank’s is made of the same heavy duty, discolored plastic. Beside the sink is a narrow stove, shittier than the one in Karen’s apartment, shoved against a half foot of counter space. There’s no fridge. 

Past the kitchen area, Frank pulls a folding chair from under the card table and takes a seat; the chair is half of a mismatched pair, one – where Frank sits now, facing away from the door – is old, rusted metal; the other colorful, made of what looks to be hand-painted wood. Karen can’t make out the precise design, only that it features deep purples and oranges. _Micro?_ Karen's brain supplies before she tucks her confusion away for later, distracted by Rachel’s brusque movement through the apartment towards the wall to Karen’s right.

The wall is half-finished, no coat of paint or layer of drywall to cover the wooden framing. But it’s largely obscured by a series of massive shelves – metal, cheaply bought, five or six levels high. They’re each heavy-laden with more things than Karen could possibly begin to process right now, if she could manage to make out finer details in the wanting light. Rachel slides a bin out from one of the shelves, pulling from it a bottle of liquid Karen doesn’t recognize, scissors, and what looks like a stack of unpackaged kleenex. Karen frowns.

The sound of running water snags her attention. Kathy has switched on the kitchen sink. At her right elbow is a small pile of dishes; one plate, one bowl. One of those tall, red plastic cups Karen’s only ever seen before in diners. Kathy fills the cup with water, then downs the whole thing herself before filling it again, making her way to the card table and setting the cup down in front of Frank.

Rachel drags the second chair into position, so she can sit at the far side of the table perpendicular to Frank. She grabs his tool bag and sets it on the floor, shuffling papers out of the way, clearing space.

When she’s done, Frank hauls his injured arm up onto the tabletop, still bleeding. His sleeve is wet with blood; it’s hard to map the edges of the stain against the already dark fabric of Frank’s shirt. Rachel takes the oddly shaped scissors – bent at an angle and rounded off, the ends blunted – and sets to cutting a straight line up the fabric.

Karen’s stomach lurches again. _Oh, god._ She reaches out and braces one hand against the wall, her fingers wrapping around a section of rough wooden framing. Her other hand presses against her mouth. Karen squeezes her eyes shut, listening to the sounds of fabric being snipped apart. She can smell peroxide.

“Head’s that way, Legs,” Kathy grunts. Karen’s eyes fly open. Kathy’s a few paces away from her, cotton ball and brown bottle of peroxide in hand. She wets the cotton, jerking her head over towards the wall to Karen’s right. When Karen looks, she realizes that a relatively short length of wall juts out into the otherwise completely open space, making the bathroom the only enclosed area in the apartment. Kathy gestures for Karen to turn a corner, the bathroom entrance apparently tucked away, out of sight from the front door. Kathy presses the cotton into her torn shoulder and bares her teeth. 

Karen nods, unwilling to open her mouth – for fear of being sick, or worse: her voice cracking when she says _thank you._

She tries her best not to run across the short distance. She’s mostly successful. When she swings the bathroom door shut behind her, light creeps in through a gap between the door and the floor, at least four inches wide. Karen’s brow furrows.

The light offers enough visibility for her to search and find the cord that hangs above the sink. When she pulls it, another bare lightbulb snaps on, this one jutting out from the wall.

The bathroom is meager. A standing shower in the far left corner, with only a clear liner to act as a curtain. Across from the shower – in the far right corner – is the toilet. The sink beside the shower is small, low enough on the wall that Karen thinks you’d have to almost double over to wash your face in it. A small, cracked mirror above it, screwed directly into the wall – no medicine chest, no cupboard beneath the sink. Balanced on the narrow surface by the faucet is a small ceramic cup holding a razor and a single toothbrush, beside it a tube of Arm & Hammer toothpaste. 

A fracture runs diagonally across Karen’s face when she meets her eyes in the mirror; too wide, red-rimmed. Her skin is alarmingly pale. She looks away.

Karen braces her hands on the lip of the sink. Her knees bend. She eases her shoulders downward, the air trapped in her lungs rushing out of her in a miserable exhale. Her elbows shake – now, alone, it’s as though she can’t hold herself up. As if Leatherneck’s presence was the only thing keeping her on her feet. 

Which is –

 _Ridiculous_. She shakes her head and turns on the tap. The sink clangs as it summons cold water, Karen inhaling sharply when the water splashes her hands. She exhales again. The fine hairs on her arms stand on end, chill reaching up to her elbows. She bows over, splashes water on her face for good measure.

Another trick from the therapist: _Splash water on your face when you’re overwhelmed._ It had sounded like a load of shit when Karen first heard it, but the cold shocks the sluggishness from her thoughts, enough to allow Karen a deep, steady breath when she switches the water back off.  

She considers her reflection again. The hair framing her face drips, droplets of water dotting her blouse. It’s still buttoned up all the way to the dip between her clavicles; suddenly, the press of linen against her skin rankles, collar constricting her throat.

Pale fingers fumbling with the buttons of her collar, Karen flips the lid down over the toilet seat and sits, dropping her bag on the floor beside her. _God_. Her elbows press into her knees as she raises her fingertips to her temples. Her head droops. She keeps her eyes closed. Inhales, slow, through her nose, then back out through her mouth. She pushes the pads of her fingers into the skin of her temples, massaging lightly.

When her breath evens out, Karen opens her eyes. 

There’s blood on her shoes. Brightly contrasted against flesh tone patent leather, red and shining.

Karen jackknifes, as if to scrabble backwards off the toilet lid, kicking her feet free of her heels in the process. They fly into Frank’s shower, rustling the cheap plastic liner.

Her chest heaves. Blood on her shoes, her socks – the thick fuzzy kind you get from grandparents at Christmas, a hole worn in the heel. Blue socks. Blue and red, now; blue swallowed by red, fuzzy texture matted down, gathering red from the living room carpet. 

Emergency red. Human red.

Karen sits on the back of the toilet, her stockinged feet pressed flat against the lid. Her hand rubs at her chest, slid under the opened neck of her blouse; pulse rabbit-quick against her fingertips.

 

* * *

 

One thing, and then the next thing. That’s how this goes. Frank knows the drill. 

You go too far, you stop. Don’t explain yourself. Don’t try to fix it. Just stop, and wait for the rush to fade. Stay steady and remind yourself: _doing nothing is better than doing something stupid._

So that’s what Frank does: he stands at the back of his skull and waits, listening to himself through a wall of bone. On the other side of the wall, another Frank puts one foot in front of the other, measures his breath: in through the nose, out through the mouth. He waits for his vision to recalibrate, let him see the lines again.

But – his palm itches, right where he’d touched him; where Frank had gripped his useless goddamn skull and driven it into the ground. Where he’d raised it back up with every intention of doing it again.

He wants to. The desire doesn’t hurt, or make his breath come faster. It’s a different breed of want, the generalized itch that always accompanies unfinished business. Even now, knowing the time has passed, that it’s _done_ , he wants to walk the few blocks back to The Safehouse and finish the job. It’s a truth which inhabits the corner of the room like a crouched animal; one that won’t attack so long as you pretend it isn’t there. Frank can hear it breathing, but doesn’t meet its eyes.  

“You with us, Frank?” A smooth, familiar voice. Frank turns to look: Rachel and her slate gray eyes, aiming to guide him out of the clinging pink mist and back to his own living room. He moves slow, eyes traveling across her face to the apartment behind her and down to the blood on the table, pooled around Frank’s left elbow before she could put pressure on the wound.

Because he’d been stabbed. That Nazi piece of shit stabbed him. The sensation is more heat than pain, for now. Frank clenches his left fist just to feel the throb.

So. Rachel probably stopped him from killing a man tonight. It wouldn’t be the first time.

And she’s still waiting on something. “You gonna talk to me?”

Frank squints. Hums. A car horn sounds, muted through double-paned glass. He nods. 

“I can fill in some of the holes.” She readjusts her grip on his forearm, careful to maintain pressure. “This is just a guess, but it seems like we lost you for a minute.” Her voice is a reverse echo, becoming clearer by the second.

Frank blinks at her, sluggish. Hums again. Rachel shoots him a pointed look, eyebrows raised; translation: _use your words_. Frank clears his throat. “Guess you did.” He barely opens his mouth to say it, jaw clenching and unclenching in an irregular rhythm. His voice is thick, dragging across his tongue. Has to concentrate on shaping the sounds right.

The sway comes back to him, then, shoulders lurching into a faint rocking motion without his say-so. Rachel nods, eyes flicking back down to the compress she has gripped against Frank’s forearm; the formerly white gauze now bright red and sopping.

“Jesus,” another voice – at once higher and rougher than Rachel’s – interjects. It’s Kathy, pausing the meandering lap she’s been walking around the apartment to step closer to the table, summoned by gore. The soaked-through material on Frank’s skin has caught her attention, even if it won’t hold it for long. Frank blinks up at her, frowning a little when he sees she’s dabbing at a deep scrape on her own forearm with a cotton ball, the fluffy material dotted red.

Rachel doesn’t react. She reaches for a fresh compress, layering it over the old one before reapplying pressure. Kathy returns to her idle patrol of the perimeter of Frank’s apartment. A few seconds later he hears her start to whistle, the tune faint and formless.

Frank shifts his elbow on the tabletop. His right thumb taps against his thigh. For a moment, Kathy’s whistling sounds suspiciously like _Amazing Grace_. Frank wrinkles his nose.

A minute or so passes before Kathy circles back around, again stopping at the table to survey Frank’s blood loss.

“Fuck.” She shakes her head, starts walking again. She’s across the apartment from the two of them in a few strides. She throws her voice back over her shoulder, following up with, “You got an iron, Frankie? We could fix you up _Boondock Saints_ style.”

“Think we got it from here, Kath.” Rachel says suddenly, voice raised just enough to reach Kathy where she’s pulled to a stop before a large informational flyer posted on the opposite wall. The top reads _KNOW YOUR RIGHTS_ in thick, capital letters.

Kathy’s eyes trail down the bulleted list. She grunts, turning and re-approaching the card table.

“Yeah?” Kathy asks. She offers Frank a considering look. “You good?”

“Managed to save the arm after all,” Rachel responds in Frank’s stead, voice utterly expressionless.

Kathy snorts. “Right.” She steps around Rachel towards Frank. The smirk on her face makes his own mouth twitch in turn. “Night, fucker.” There’s a jagged fondness shot through the middle of Kathy’s voice. She lays a brief, hard kiss on the crown of Frank’s head, her chin knocking his forehead when she leans in. He keeps his head down after she pulls away, thumbing at a bloodstain on his jeans. Then Kathy pivots, laying an identical kiss on Rachel’s hair. “Good show.” 

“Good show,” Rachel confirms.

The next few seconds are filled with the heavy slide of Kathy’s boots against the hardwood floor, Frank lifting his head to watch her go. A few feet shy of the door, she turns on her heel and _grins_ , glancing between the two of them.

“Good _fight_ ,” she says, loud. There’s an exaggerated edge to her voice. Pure bravado. Frank drops his head again, chuckling quietly into his chest; listens to sound of his door snapping shut followed by a heavy exhale from Rachel.

He looks up at her. Her gaze is clear, concentrated, but she’s fading: eyelids ever-so-slightly heavier than they were a minute ago. Frank drags his elbow a few inches across the tabletop, right hand moving to take over holding the gauze to his skin. The second compress is mostly red now too, but not shining, not wet to the touch. When Frank opens his mouth, his jaw clicks. “I can do –”

“Stop. I got it,” Rachel cuts him off, voice mild. Frank’s head sways to the side, once, hand resettling against his thigh. The pain in his forearm has started arriving by degrees, lengthening through the muscle. His jaw tics.

Rachel’s gaze flits over his face. “I’m here y’know,” she says. “You can talk to me.”

Frank sighs, open-mouthed, breath an audible rasp.

“You need to talk to me,” Rachel presses, “‘cause the reporter’s still here, and she wasn’t looking too good.”

Frank stills. “Karen’s here?” _No shit. Of course she is._

Rachel makes a low noise in the affirmative. “In the bathroom.”  

Frank blinks at her, brow furrowing a handful of seconds after Rachel speaks. It feels like her voice has to sink through a layer of mud before it reaches the place in Frank’s head where he can absorb the information enough to matter. But when it does, all at once his memory sharpens: in the space between pulling that guy off Rachel and opening the other one’s head up all over the concrete – the skinhead writhing in the gravel, still making noise, still reaching for the knife like it was gonna make a goddamn difference; bone snapping; warm metal against Frank’s palm.

Somewhere, in the middle of all of that, are Karen’s eyes.

At the time, it hadn’t registered. Now, Frank enters the memory like a room that’s already been cleared of threats, assessing the damage. What she must have felt, stood there against a backdrop of brick, hand clamped over her mouth, watching. In Frank’s head, her eyes are _huge_.

“And you know what?” Rachel continues. Frank realizes he’s not actually looking at her anymore, head turned in the direction of the bathroom door of its own accord. She’s pausing, giving Frank a second to refocus. When he does, she waits another beat before speaking. “She ain’t a combat reporter.”

That’s what pulls him out of it, after everything. Rachel and her hard, bone-dry humor; the anchoring truth that _this woman is incapable of bullshit_. Frank huffs a laugh, swaying forward. Rachel’s eyes tighten in a smile she’s not entirely prepared to let him have yet, lips still set in a straight line.

“I’m assuming the plan wasn’t to get a band photographer just so she’d have hard evidence to give the cops.” Her tone is sardonic, wrapped around a note of warning.

“She ain’t gonna do that,” Frank says, immediate. Rachel raises an eyebrow. A quiet moment passes, Frank’s jaw ticcing. “I’ll talk to her.” 

Rachel’s face is impassive. “You gotta be smart.”

Frank snorts, a touch derisive. “What did I just say to you? I said I’ll talk to her.” His voice is sharper, meaner than before, and all the more present for it.

Rachel meets his eyes with a hard stare. Then she nods, looks down to his forearm. She pulls back the edge of the compress, checking underneath. “Bleeding’s stopped,” Rachel offers, laying the gauze back in place before breaking her grip on Frank’s arm. She stands, peeling the latex gloves from her hands with a snapping sound. “Clean it up before you hit the sack.”

“Just gimme the stuff,” Frank murmurs, scrubbing his right hand over his face. His skin itches. When he drops his hand back down, there are flecks of dried blood stuck to the palm.

He hears Rachel walk across the apartment, the drag of plastic against metal. Then she’s back, laying a small package of Band-Aids on the table. “Butterfly’s’ll probably work best,” she says.

Frank grunts. He looks down at Rachel’s feet, brow creasing. She’s favoring one side slightly, just enough for Frank to notice. “How’s that leg workin’?”

“I’ll live.” Her voice is low, face serious. Frank looks up at her. Rachel looks back. After a beat, she smiles. “It _was_ a good show.”

Frank makes an abrupt sound through his nose, somewhere between a snort and a scoff, watching Rachel wipe her hands on her thighs. Before turning to leave, her eyes flick towards the bathroom. Frank tilts his head to one side, tracking Rachel’s path in his peripheral vision; she doesn’t look back when she reaches the front door, pulling it shut behind her with a faint click and leaving Frank alone in the quiet.

Ambient sounds of the Kitchen crowd against the closed windows. Only one of the two overhead bulbs being lit leaves the far corner of the apartment – where Frank’s bed sits, just across from the bathroom door – in shadow, the task lamp on the card table still trained on his gored forearm like a spotlight.

Frank wrinkles his nose, flexing his right hand before reaching to peel back the gauze just enough to check underneath. The bleeding hasn’t started up again, and he removes the gauze entirely, spent blood just beginning to adopt a brownish hue. Then he reaches for the bottle of saline Rachel had set out. It’s between a small stack of unused compresses and the box of Band-Aids – Frank nearly knocks the latter off the table when he grabs the bottle. 

The saline solution is cool on his skin when he wets the area around the knife wound. Frank clenches his jaw, silently steeling himself before aiming the squeeze bottle’s tip squarely at the wound itself, lightly pressurized liquid hitting the incised flesh with just enough force to make Frank’s breath hitch. He holds the bottle at an angle, flooding the injury until the solution streams down his arm; first bright red, then gradations of pink, before finally running clear.

Karen still hasn’t left the bathroom. Frank glances over his right shoulder: wan light expands outward from beneath the bathroom door. He doesn’t hear any movement inside. His jaw tics. 

It’s good that people are scared of him, until it isn’t. Until they look at him like they’ve got no idea who or _what_ he is, and Frank feels his awareness shoot out of his body, watching his behavior unfold as if through a scope; eyeing the threat of himself from a distance.

He knows how he looks. His reputation, all of it. He puts it to good use. Somewhere between ‘violent’ and ‘crazy’ Frank discovered an asset, a new weapons system with which to familiarize himself.

But there’s blood on his table and a girl in his bathroom who didn’t sign up for this shit.

Frank stares over his shoulder at the pale light under the bathroom door another handful of seconds before reaching for the box of Band-Aids and pulling out two butterfly closures.

One thing, and then the next thing.

Frank knows the drill.

 

* * *

 

Karen doesn’t know how long she spends in Frank’s bathroom, her eyes shut tight and her head between her knees until she can’t feel her toes. They curl over the edge of the seat lid, Karen still perched awkwardly on the back of the toilet. 

It feels like no time has passed at all when she opens her eyes again, vision slightly blurred before refocusing; blinking at her bare feet, her shoes holding back Frank’s curtain where she’d kicked them off into the shower stall.

Despite being alone, Karen’s cheeks heat as she climbs down from the uncomfortable seat and moves to retrieve the shoes. She leans over the edge of the shower’s boundary – marked by a slight raise in the tile – to do so, unwilling to breach Frank’s privacy more than she already has. Still, when she leans in, she notices the shower’s sole inhabitant: a bar of Dial soap, tucked in a nook in the shower wall.

When Karen realizes she’s staring at it – no face or bodywash, just a lone bar of soap that she knows for a fact she couldn’t use without getting a rash – she grabs her shoes and jerks backwards, stumbling a little before landing on the toilet lid. The shower liner falls back into place. She looks down.

The blood on the toes of her pumps has dried to a rusted brown. Karen clenches her jaw and muscles down another rush of nausea. She pictures the memories she doesn’t want to think about right now, hidden behind a closed door. Imagines bracing a chair under the knob; shoving a key in the lock and breaking it off.

She has to get out of this bathroom.

Karen tugs on the shoes. Doesn’t let herself look down. Finds that her purse is still slung over her shoulder and feels more foolish than she ever has. _What the hell am I doing here?_

She walks to the door and takes a deep, grounding breath only to find that her lungs feel like lace. Her palm spread on the doorframe, Karen tries to brace herself for whatever’s waiting on the other side: Kathy’s snicker, Rachel’s silence. Frank being –

Frank being wherever he is. She just has to get out of this room. Out of this apartment. Throw away her shoes and spend the rest of the night looking for a new job. One that will take her far away from these ten blocks, away from the music – and the people – that call them home. A legal secretary, maybe.

Karen opens the door.

She’s staring at a bed. Box-spring, twin-sized mattress – held a bare few inches off the floor by a basic metal frame, wheels at the bottom. Fastidiously well made, hospital corners and all. Beside the bed is a low table: lamp and what appears to be a small stack of books on its surface. There’s also an alarm clock. Not digital. She can’t make out its face well enough to tell the time, but knows it has to be late – the apartment is noticeably darker now than when she’d first slipped into the bathroom. An embarrassed clench in Karen’s gut accompanies the observation.

She snaps her gaze away from the bed quickly, the back of her neck heating. It feels like something she’s not supposed to have seen.

Karen forces herself to move, turning away from the bathroom to round the corner back towards the front of Frank’s apartment.

His utterly silent apartment.

Karen casts her gaze around the room. Frank’s back is to her, broad shoulders moving quietly, somewhat backlit by a lamp Karen can’t see from where she’s standing. His head is bent. The cut she’d been staring at when they’d left The Safehouse reopened itself in the fray – there’s blood beading down Frank’s nape. Karen has to quell the hysterical urge to wipe it away with Kleenex.

Her eyes skid away from the blood. That’s when she notices – the apartment is otherwise empty. They’re alone.

She’s speaking before it occurs to her not to. “I – shit, I’m so sorry,” Karen insists, hurrying forward to leave, one hand gripping her purse strap. “I’ll – I didn’t realize it was so late.” She’s almost to the door, reaching out for the handle. “I’ll just go, leave you alon –”

“No,” Frank says. Low. Rough. His voice cuts down the middle of Karen’s spine, freezing her where she stands. She turns, hand resting on the doorknob. On the table in front of him she can see, among other things: red-stained bandages and discarded paper wrappers, the strange scissors Rachel had used to cut Frank’s shirt-sleeve, and the red cup of water Kathy had poured, seemingly untouched. Frank turns to look at her, pressing something to his forearm as he meets Karen’s eyes.

His gaze is clear, locked on her own. Eyes dark in the half-light. Karen finds she’s unable to look away. “You stay.”

Karen’s hand drops from the knob. “I –” she starts. Exhales, abandoning the thought. “What?”

“Stay,” he repeats. His focus shifts with the slowness of a tectonic plate, up and down her face, studying, before – “Please.”

For a moment, Karen thinks about Gunner Henderson.

The call had come after her second conversation with Frank. The one about _The Tyger_ , when he’d fought to get the words out and Karen had given him her notebook. That Monday, she had a call waiting for her at the office. According to Trish the caller’d been on hold for over half an hour.

She remembers Gunner telling her that if Frank asked you to do it, you did it. Not because he wouldn’t do it himself. Just the opposite. He asked because he knew that if it were ever turned around – if you asked _him_ to do something for _you_ , to get the job done – he’d do the same. He’d show up. Frank’s sense of loyalty had always bordered on frightening, and he just expected that same loyalty from others. _It wasn’t often you got a C.O. like that. Sure as shit not in Iraq._

Karen walks across the studio to Micro’s chair, still situated on the far side of the table from the kitchen area, adjacent to Frank. She sits.

There’s blood. A lot of it. Karen swallows, resting one elbow on an unsullied corner of the table and covering her mouth as her gaze wanders to the right, over Frank’s shoulder. There’s more to the apartment, things she hasn’t seen. But Karen’s not really looking at anything anymore.

“Hey,” Frank says. She hears him sway before she sees it. His metal folding chair creaks under his weight as he swings himself into her line of sight, head ducked down. Non-threatening. “Karen.” His voice is soft, shaped around her name.

She swallows. A shame she can’t begin to explain to him still sits heavy on her diaphragm, the aftertaste crawling up her throat to coat the back of her tongue. Karen screws her eyes shut hard enough to see spots. When she opens them again, Frank’s face assembles itself before her, lamplight catching the lightest fractals of brown in his eyes. “What am I doing here, Frank?” the words sound small and confused, spoken through her fingers. The bitterness at the back of her tongue intensifies, stale and astringent.

“You were never in any danger,” he says, in lieu of answering her question.

Karen blinks. Lowers her hand from her mouth and leans back in her chair to get a clearer look at him. “What?”

“Back there,” Frank says, something in his eyes tightening, jerking his head towards the window. “With those shitbricks.” He pauses, waits for her to reply. When the silence stretches, he continues “I don’t –“ Changes course. “I only let people get hurt who deserve it.”

 _God_. Instantly, Karen wants to tell him that it’s a nice thing to say, but that she’s seen people get hurt – worse than hurt – for no reason, when no part of them deserved it. People who were just –

She throttles that line of thought. That’s not what he’s talking about, and she knows it. Karen swallows it all down, a cruel voice in her head reminding her that she wouldn’t be telling him anything worth hearing; that Frank _knows_ good people get hurt every day. 

Karen drops her gaze. Without meaning to, it lands on his arm. The cut’s not bleeding anymore, but he’s still holding the skin together. Another butterfly bandage sits on the table, still in its packaging. Waiting to be applied just beside the first.

Karen doesn’t say: _Then do you deserve to get hurt?_

“You think they deserved it?” comes out instead. She swallows and forces herself to look back up. There’s a slight crease in Frank’s brow as he absorbs the question, a small line deepening over the bridge of his nose.

The answer is, of course, _yes_. And Karen knows it. She also knows Frank. She grits her teeth, bracing herself for his taciturn reply: a grunt, a jerk of the head. An incredulous look, the _are you fucking kidding me?_ writ large across his features.

It doesn’t come. Frank’s reply is simple. “I do.”

She looks at him. He looks at her. Karen nods, her bottom lip inching between her teeth. She doesn’t say _sorry, that was a stupid question._ And Frank doesn’t say _it’s okay._

“Point is,” he continues, speaking up now. “You were safe. I just wanted you to know that.”

The words settle over Karen. _You were safe._ The emphasis, the repetition. The need to drill in the fact that she was safe the whole time.

It means that Frank thinks Karen was scared.

The realization bubbles up her throat, shaped like laughter; the hysterical kind that Karen has to swallow back as if it were vomit, hiding the abrupt motion by ducking her head, pressing her mouth back into her palm. Frank thinks she was _scared_.

Thinks that violence is a stranger to Karen, one that she’s just been rudely introduced to — like brutality is a nervous dog and Frank’s giving her his word that it won’t bite.

But it isn’t. It’s an animal confined to the backyard, complete with signs posted in warning. Karen can distract herself from it with work or the bottle, just so long as she doesn’t look it in the eyes; slip back into the blood streaked familiarity that rips her out of sleep almost every night, bathed in sweat, gasping for oxygen that doesn’t taste red.

Frank thinks she was swallowing down _fear_ in that alley. But it was recognition.

 _Well_. Karen figures there isn’t much difference anymore.  

Frank’s still looking at her intently when she finally drags her gaze back to him, slight furrow in his brow and all; the gears in his head working, trying to figure her out. Karen feels the back of her neck heat. Swallows, shakes her head a fraction of an inch to clear the dust from her skull.

She drops her gaze again. “You have paper towels, Frank?” Karen asks, steering the conversation off-road. She looks up, raises an eyebrow.

“Huh?” he grunts, leaning back in his chair to look down his bruised nose at her. She doesn’t flinch.

“The blood,” she says, “it’ll stain.”

A studious flicker of his brow, from her eyes down to the tabletop; the discarded bandages, soaked through and leaking; blood and saline pooled together in thick, vivid swirls. “Under the sink,” he says finally.

Karen nods, clicking her tongue once. She pushes up from her seat, glad for something to do as she walks around Frank into the minuscule kitchen. Under the legs of the sink, as promised, is a plastic bucket. Inside, one roll of paper towels (the brown kind Karen recognizes from public restrooms), a box of baking soda, and a spray bottle of clear liquid. She smells it and instantly recognizes the acidic reek of white vinegar. It’s what Karen’s mom had used to clean the stovetop, every Saturday morning.

Karen sets the memory aside, pulling the bucket out. Behind it is a plastic bag stuffed with other plastic bags. Karen pulls one of those out as well, and leaves the rest.

Frank is silent as she makes her way back towards him. He’s pressing the last bandage into place as she sits down.

Karen takes out the baking soda, vinegar, and paper towels. Sets them on the clean corner of the table, not allowing herself to look at Frank as she works.

Copper scent burns in the back of her nose, metallic and familiar. She holds her breath as best she can as she plucks soaked cotton and wax paper wrappers from the card table and tosses them into the plastic bag – which she keeps inside the bucket so as not to stain Frank’s floor (hardwood, worth a hefty security deposit, Karen would guess). Then she takes a pinch of baking soda between her fingers.

The white powder turns pink as she sprinkles it over the soiled surface. Frank lifts his elbow with a grunt, cradling his forearm against his chest, giving Karen space to work. She sprays the baking soda with vinegar and the smell gets worse. Karen swallows, chewing on her tongue as the chemicals mix, filling the quiet studio with a soft hiss.

As Karen tears off another section of paper towel, Frank speaks. “Done this before?”

Karen pauses, cold rushing her spine. She’d never been able to get the blood out of the carpet. Never been able to get –

She stops. Looks at Frank. His gaze is open. “Once,” Karen replies.

Frank grunts in response and Karen looks away to scrub at the caked mixture of baking soda, blood, and vinegar, scooping whatever the paper towel can’t absorb into the bag she’d arranged in the bucket.

The silence weighs a ton, dragging on Karen’s shoulders. Words lodge in her throat, and she notes a low thrum of gathering panic; the compulsion to speak butting up against a locked door.

Finally, “My mom used to use this stuff on the kitchen stove.”

“You get a lotta blood on the stove, huh?” The left corner of Frank’s mouth tilts up. Crow’s feet fold at the corners of his eyes. His sway is back – a contained universe of movement that’s so uniquely _Frank_ it makes Karen feel all at once more present: she’s here, in Frank’s apartment. Practically sitting across from him, just like she has before. Like she probably never will again, but still. It’s an anchor.

Karen stares for a moment.

His joke finds purchase between landmines, drawing a dry scoff from Karen’s throat. “Dick,” she mutters, looking back down at the table. She tears off another thick swath of paper towels, determined to keep blood and baking soda off her fingertips.

“Classy,” Frank clucks back. Karen rolls her eyes. She scrubs at a deep scratch in the cheap material of the table, where Frank’s blood has gathered the most. A beat of silence. “Louisa did the same shit,” Frank adds, as Karen drops more dirty towels into her makeshift trash bag. “Used baking soda for everything.”

Karen glances up at the mention of his mother. It shouldn’t surprise her at this point, how readily Frank doles out stories about his family. But it does. When she tries to pinpoint _why_ , she realizes it’s because she’s never before heard a man talk about his mother at such length unless it’s to complain.

( _Present company not included_ hangs in the back of Karen’s mind. Frank’s – different than anyone she’s ever met, to put it simply.)  

He’s nodding subtly, smoothing over one of the Band-Aids on his forearm with his index finger. “Yeah…she’d clean the floor with it, the dishes. I even brushed my teeth with that shit. Got my ass chewed out for it in basic.” He laughs – that strange _heh-heh_ , half grunt, half giggle that Karen’s still not used to.

“The Marines have standard issue toothpaste?” She allows herself a pallid smile.

Frank pauses, eyes still narrowed in laughter even as his gaze sharpens. The line of his brow slopes as he regards her, expression shrewd. “You askin’ to ask or you askin’ ‘for your piece’?”

Karen freezes. Her mouth hangs open for a beat. Two. Three, before she manages to close it. Just like that it’s as though the last three, four hours haven’t happened – she’s just as flabbergasted and humiliated as she was when he’d asked, _So. You talked to Gunner, huh?_

The truth is that Karen’s never been good at getting caught in a lie; not when she was nine and trying to cover up having eaten the last cookie, not when she was fifteen and lying about driving the family station wagon to Burlington with her friends for the night. She has always buckled under the weight of dishonesty.

“I –“ she starts, opening her mouth too wide. She swallows convulsively, nearly choking on the words. “Frank –” No, that’s not right either. Her face feels hot as she finally manages, “I really didn’t mean to be –”

“Chrissake,” Frank mutters, interrupting her. “Shit happened.” He shrugs, his bottom lip turning down into something that’s not quite a frown, not quite a pout, punctuating the expression with an abrupt shrug. As if the sizable lie is just water under the bridge.

Karen’s line of thought sticks like a tire in mud. “But – I. Everyone –”

And _that_ pulls another laugh out of him. “Shit, Karen,” Frank says, reining in the amused quake in his shoulders, “s’just me an’ Micro. We ain’t gonna court martial you.”

She sits back in her chair. Stares. Frank’s expression telegraphs something that should be obvious to Karen but just plain _isn’t_. “Rachel and Kathy –”

“Ain’t exactly the type to be keeping tabs.” Frank finishes. “Only reason I know about it is ‘cause Lieberman told me. ‘Sides, don’t you think you’d know if O’Brien caught you in a fib?” He arches one heavy eyebrow.

He has a point. When she should be feeling relieved, however, Karen only feels more sheepish – aware now, hours after the fact, that she might have overreacted. A fresh wave of embarrassment curls through her organs, starting at the bottom of her stomach and reaching into her throat. She’s a goddamn idiot.

Yet, Frank’s own words shoot back to her, spoken months ago on the same street corner from which they’ve just fled:  _Take it down about eight notches in the defensive bullshit department, yeah?_

Karen exhales. She’d dropped Frank’s gaze at some point, contemplating the more-or-less clean tabletop and her own hands, still gripping a knot of paper towels. “Asking to ask,” she answers finally.

Frank nods again, the corners of his mouth slipping up. “Fair enough.” He sniffs. “Yeah, the Corps’ll give you toothpaste. Just not before they make you eat shit.”

She returns the nod, staring at the juncture of his neck and shoulder – his collar is sagging, but not in the moth-bitten way most of Frank’s clothes hang on his thick frame. The fabric is pulled, fraying. _When did that happen? At the show, or after?_ Karen can see more of the silver chain round his neck than usual, before it dips below the fabric of his shirt.

Karen looks up at him and smiles; heavy on her face, close-mouthed and polite in a way that’s all wrong for the conversation they’re having. Her eyes trail downward – there’s a tiny, perfect circle of blood on the hardwood near a leg of Frank’s chair. Karen leans to one side, surveying the rest of the floor. She can see at least two more spots, drying behind him. It’s likely trailed throughout the apartment. She leans over in her seat, legs folding awkwardly to the side as she reaches for the nearest spot, scrubbing at it with a paper towel.

“Karen, Jesus,” Frank starts. His right hand moves to take hold of her arm, the touch feather-light, nudging her back upright. “You’re not cleaning my goddamn floor.” 

She blinks at him a moment before exhaling heavily, dropping the paper towels in her hand into the bucket and bracing her elbows on the tabletop. Exhaustion crests over her, crashing down across her shoulders, neck and back. Her limbs weigh on her, as if her muscle and blood and bone have all been scooped out of her skin and replaced with sand. She ducks her head, pushing both hands through her hair. “Shit.” 

Frank makes a commiserative noise in the back of his throat and Karen peers through her fingers at him. He catches the look, surreptitious as it is, because of course he does. The sound of Karen’s following inhale fills the apartment – she hates it, the shudder in her breath; the way it sounds at once large and so, so small.

When she tightens her shoulders and sits up, Frank asks, “You always clean when you’re nervous?”

There’s a beat where the question is somehow so surprising, so out of place, that it shocks Karen back into the present moment; as if she’d been somewhere outside it, above it. She looks at the pile of paper towels in the bucket between her feet. Still in her work clothes, and she was about to get on her hands and knees to clean blood off the floor. Karen snorts, shoulders trembling.

“Guess I do,” she breathes, leaning back in her chair with a quiet creak. The unexpected admission feels – illicit. Like sneaking a drink of her parents’ liquor after dark. She shakes her head, trying to navigate the slight hysteria that’s risen in her chest.

Her hair falls forward when she straightens again. Frank wavers, muted movements shifting gears before Karen’s eyes. He starts to sway – not his usual steady, pendular rocking. The movement’s less balanced, something precarious in the way Frank sags against his seat. His eyes are far away again, slipping –

Karen realizes Kathy’s cup of water’s still on the table, untouched.

“Hey,” Karen says, a little louder than necessary. She reaches out, slides the glass across the table in front of Frank – who blinks at the sound of her voice, mouth twisting downward. Karen might not be a medic, but it doesn’t take formal training to know Frank’s lost more than a little blood. “Drink.” She tries her best to sound authoritative. Claire’s face flickers in her thoughts.

As Frank obliges, Karen wonders where – _if_ – she could find food here. She knows Frank should probably eat something. But looking over at the kitchen once more, his prospects seem bleak. _Who doesn’t have a_ fridge _?_

But. Joan gave her a brownie. That’s got sugar in it. Karen figures blood sugar is important, something Frank must need replaced. She pulls her bag off her shoulder, opening it on the table and carefully extracting the brownie from where it’s tucked away at the bottom, wrapped in a napkin to protect her camera from errant crumbs.

She places it on the table and unfolds the napkin.

Frank stares. “What is that?”

“A…brownie?” Her voice lilts up at the end of the word before Karen can nail it down.

He’s eyeing the brownie like he doesn’t quite believe her. When Karen glances at it, she figures she can’t blame him — over the course of a night getting jostled around in her bag, the brownie’s structural integrity has been compromised. But it’s in one piece, and there aren’t any crumbs at the bottom of her purse. It should be fine. He needs to eat.

“It’s, uh. Joan gave it to me.” Karen licks her lips. Determination squares her shoulders. “You could use some sugar.”

Frank huffs, raising his good arm to scrub a hand over his face before leaning forward, resting both arms on the card table like he’s just given himself permission to do so. There’s a bemused smile folded into the corner of his mouth as he considers the brownie.

Then Frank lurches to one side so suddenly Karen startles, momentarily afraid he’s passed out before he sways back upright, a knife in his right hand. It’s the same one he’d used to eat beans straight out of the can, during that long rehearsal Karen’d sat in on. She hadn’t expected it then, either.

Her shoulders tense. “What—”

The knife cuts her off, Frank reaching forward and using it to divide the brownie down the middle. After, Frank sets it aside.

Karen considers the weapon: notched brown hilt, matte black finish preventing the metal from catching light the way most knives would. At the base of the blade, just above the hilt, Karen can make out the engraved letters _USMC_. The blade alone is nearly as long as Karen’s forearm, edge now dotted with chocolate crumbs.

Frank breaks a bite-size piece off his half and pops it into his mouth with sigh, gazing out the window into the city night as he chews.

There’s dried blood on his knuckles. Karen stares at him. He shoots her a sidelong glance and shrugs.

Karen can’t shake the surreal feeling like she’s been home for hours already, asleep in bed. That this is all just a weird fucking dream she might tell a friend about over coffee, come morning: _So there was a brownie that had like, magical healing powers. It was nighttime. Frank Castle was there…_

Then Frank shifts forward in his seat, careful not to jostle his bad arm when he grips the edge of the napkin, dragging it — and the brownie atop it — across the tabletop until it rests in front of Karen. The furrow in his brow deepens. The expression is _fussy_ in a way that has Karen swallowing a gentle laugh, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. She lifts her half of the confection to her mouth, takes a bite. Doesn’t miss Frank’s faint, satisfied nod.

Karen reminds herself to thank Joan, later.  


* * *

 

She finally does make it to bed more than an hour later, after being shooed off by Frank — him grumbling that she’s had a long night, Karen weakly replying that so did he — and agreeing to return Sunday afternoon, give talking over the upcoming tour another shot. 

Karen doesn’t sleep well. She sleeps like she’s in a fight, wakes tangled in her sheets with the back of her night shirt drenched, sticking to her shoulder blades. All she remembers from her dreams is gunfire and the tang of blood, clinging to her nostrils. She sits slouched in bed, pressing her hand to her chest in a bid to soothe her panicked breathing.

In the morning, she throws out her shoes and changes her sweat-soaked sheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "BUT REED AND SADIE, WHERE'S THE TOUR?" so… full disclosure we both have super hectic weeks coming up and to be fair to mic verse, we've decided to release part 2 as it is here. my hope is, that when the tour chapter comes its separation from this chapter will help to heighten the fact that tour is a strange and somewhat isolated experience. 
> 
> SO, this chapter comes with some serious thank yous: since this is reed posting, i'm just gonna use the time to drop a big ol' THANK YOU to [sadie](http://sonnywortzik.tumblr.com/) for your command over frank's voice and all the futzing, poking, and proding you do. [sam](http://matriarchal.tumblr.com/), thank you as always for the grammatical edits and cheerleading. to [abbey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicspeakstoo) for all of your patience and input in micro's development and for pushing me to make micro's judaism appear on the page – it has absolutely added to their character and made them all the more real. (and also, conveniently, understanding micro's actions as a whistleblower as an act of _tikkun olam_ HITS ME IN THE CHEST WITH FEELINGS, SO THANKS.) and every single person who's read this, commented on it, kudos'd, rec'd it to a friend, reblogged a post, bookmarked, talked to us about it in our tumblr inboxes or in real life, subscribed… y'all are the fucking best.
> 
> we'll see y'all soon – first i gotta write a thesis though.


	3. Tour, 2017 (I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so… hey. this chapter is, honestly, a behemoth. it took a lot out of us to write both emotionally and probably physically? thanks for bearing with us while this chapter did its work on us and we avoided working on it because of school, travel, conventions, and, y'know, meeting in the meat space for the first time ever (thanks from the bottom of my heart again, sam and sadie for making that happen!).
> 
> this chapter was beta'd by [sam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonheist). [TransWonderWoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TransWonderWoman/pseuds/TransWonderWoman) provided vital feedback and took the time to sensitivity read a few scenes for us. thank you both. 
> 
> this chapter is _heavy_. please pay attention to the content warnings. if you see something missing there, please let us know. this chapter is massive motherfucker and i'm not entirely sure i got everything in there. (speaking of! this chapter is a monster! it's two chapters here because ao3's character limit is a coward! but you, lucky reader, you get two chapters! and the second one is a lot lighter in tone! i promise!)
> 
>  **content warnings:** ableism, war, trauma, home invasion, child death, murder, post traumatic stress related to murder, car accidents, references to racism and charlottesville, death, misogyny, transmisogyny  
>     
> good news: all assholes get what they deserve & if you've ever worked retail, this chapter is for you.

Sunday morning, she’s greeted by a text from Micro. It includes Frank’s address, and Micro apologetically adding, _Figured you didn’t get it the other night._

They sign it with at least ten emojis — smiley faces, hearts, and puppies for good measure.

Karen supposes she can’t back out now. Not after Micro responds to her radio silence with a picture of what looks like cinnamon rolls, massive and dripping with syrupy frosting on Frank’s countertop. _Also, I brought snacks._

Which is how Karen finds herself on the bus going west, counting stops until she gets to seven, when her transit app indicates for her to pull the cord.

In the daylight, Frank’s street looks like any other: brick and concrete stacked into homes, restaurants, offices; corner bodegas spilling fresh flowers and summer produce onto the sidewalks. Kids — free for the summer — shout and play, their laughter weaving with music and radio chatter that reaches out from the open windows of apartments and passing cars. The city thrums, lifeblood rushing just under the surface, like if Karen laid her hand on the hot pavement she might feel the pulse of New York against her palm.

She’s approaching the front of Frank’s building, pulling out her phone as she does to shoot Micro a text asking to come and let her in, when she’s interrupted.

A petite woman with rosy, light brown skin sits on the railing of Frank’s front steps. Her hair is thick and dark, curls coming to just above her shoulders, which are bared in the early August heat. She’s got a book in her hands: _Catch-22_. Dusky, smudged eyeshadow frames her brown eyes. Her gaze is scrutinous, sharp eyebrows knitted in concentration as she looks Karen up and down — from the bottoms of Karen’s low-top Converse, to her linen shorts, to her light blue cap-sleeved blouse, all the way up to where Karen’s hair is gathered in a low knot.

“Let me guess,” the woman starts, “you’re here for 413?” Her voice is low, direct, somehow authoritative and petulant all at once.

“I — I’m sorry?” Karen comes to a stop. Wraps one hand around the strap of her bag, slung over her shoulder.

“Castle,” she clarifies. “You’re here to see Castle.”

Karen readjusts her weight, eyes narrowing of their own accord. Her head tilts to one side. _What the fuck?_ “Uhm. Yes,” she replies. Though her voice lilts upward in confusion, wariness anchors the tone.

The woman sighs then, impatient. Indifferent to the look on Karen’s face, apparently. She sets her book down on the stoop and pushes up off the steps. “Of course you are,” she says. Karen blinks. When the woman abruptly turns her back to Karen, she pulls a carabiner thick with keys from the back pocket of her denim shorts and unlocks the front door. “Tell him,” she says as she steps backward, holding the door open, “that the fire code says he can’t have more than ten people in there at a time.”

Karen stares. The woman sighs, again, rolling her eyes and gesturing towards the open door. “Are you going in or not?” 

“Uh. Going,” Karen stammers. “Thank you,” she adds as she steps through. Any response that might have been offered is drowned out by a passing car and the slam of the front door.

When Karen nears Frank’s floor, she can hear muffled conversation in the stairwell, overlapping the rhythmic snap of drums. Exiting the stairs, the sounds clarify themselves. The music is softer than Karen had anticipated — or maybe the conversation’s just louder: Micro’s high-pitched giggle, Kathy’s indignant squawk. All tumbling through Frank’s open door.

Frank’s throaty laugh lands at Karen’s feet when she turns into the doorway.

Sunlight streams in through the two windows — propped open, inviting sounds in from the street outside. The ambient noise threads itself through the music in Frank’s apartment, though Karen can’t immediately place the source of the song. There’s no stereo she can see. Instead, her eyes trace the laughter’s origin.

It’s just as jarring as it had been on Friday night. The sound is warm, wrapped around a faint wheeze; sunlight breaking through a crack in the wall. _Heh-heh._ The accompanying grin Karen pictures in her head, splitting across his cheeks.

What Karen can actually see, however, stops her in her tracks.

So far, Frank has been almost pernicious in his consistency of uniform: always — even on show nights — a dark, long-sleeved t-shirt, jeans, heavy boots. And, more often than not, his well-loved field jacket over it all. Regardless of the heat. Even when Karen’s felt as if she were drowning in sweat, there was Frank, dressed like it was October and appearing unaffected.

But today when Karen looks at him, she’s greeted by bare shoulders. A sleeveless, worn black shirt covers his torso. Karen’s eyes catch on loose threads, the way the un-hemmed fabric curls at the edges. As if Frank had cut the sleeves off himself.

His back is to her, bent over, examining something on the surface of the card table. Karen tracks the movement of his shoulders beneath the makeshift muscle tank, the faded fabric worn thin. It’s been cut at the collar too, the frayed edge sagging just enough to offer Karen a glimpse of a knot of vertebrae at the base of Frank’s nape. His head, bowed in concentration, looks freshly buzzed.

If it weren’t for the distinctive, bruise-colored scar at the back of Frank’s skull and the butterfly bandages she can just see the edges of on his arm, Karen wouldn’t recognize him. She’s rooted in the doorway, staring.

“Legs’s here!” Kathy cries.

Kathy’s voice dials out Karen’s attention, adjusting her internal lens from close-up to wide angle. She looks around. The apartment is full, Leatherneck spread throughout.

Directly in Karen’s eye-line is Kathy, visible only by her sharp eyes peeking out over a huge cardboard box set on the floor, nearly as tall as her. Kathy drops a folded t-shirt into the box just as Karen lifts her hand to knock against the open door.

Micro — greasy curls tied back, their orange-tinted glasses pushed up onto their forehead — looks up from Frank’s table. They’re facing Karen’s way, swerving slightly to the side to catch her eye around Frank’s shoulder. Karen is treated to the full force of their hundred-kilowatt smile, the deep rivets of their dimples.

Rachel’s bright red waves are loose around her shoulders — she catches Karen’s attention when she drapes a t-shirt over a laundry rack that’s nearly full, more black t-shirts already drying in the sunlight. She’s wearing a tank top of her own, one that bears a handful of Japanese characters and _CHIKARA DOJO_ underneath in thick, dark red letters. Karen notices a tattoo on Rachel’s right bicep: eagle, globe, anchor.

For a restive moment, Karen considers flight. That it might be best to run and never, ever come back.

Frank turns, just then, head having lifted at Kathy’s announcement. When he moves, Karen sees a blur of ink on his right deltoid, another on his left bicep. He moves too fast for her to make out any details. She’s distracted besides, cataloguing the rest of his appearance: a smattering of bleach stains at the bottom of his shirtfront, like he’d gone to take it off with bleach still on his hands; his silver chain pulled free, hanging on the outside of the shirt. The dog tags and stones on his mother’s ring glint in the sunlight, brighter still against dark fabric. And finally, Frank’s hands, large and ink-stained. He wipes them perfunctorily on his shirt. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Karen replies, swallowing. “Uh,” she propels herself over the boundary of his doorway. “I, uh — there’s a woman downstairs? Said to remind you about the fire code?” Everything comes out a question. Karen feels heat drape itself over the back of her neck, the tips of her ears. Inevitable.

But her words draw laughter from Micro and Kathy. Even Rachel’s mouth twitches upward.

“That’s just Frankie’s super,” Kathy supplies before Frank can. “Woman’s a real Nurse Ratchet type.”

Karen raises an eyebrow, pausing along the wall that’s shared with Frank’s bathroom. Frank grunts, shoots Kathy a look that telegraphs clearly, _quit laying it on so thick, yeah?_ Karen can’t tell if she’s pleased or just surprised at her ability to translate.

“Madani’ll live,” he says, looking back towards Karen.

“C’mon, we can make some room over here,” Micro interjects. They wave her over before getting Frank’s attention, gesturing with their head when they catch his eyes. Wordlessly, they both turn back to whatever it is they’d been doing, Micro muttering something as Karen walks towards them.

If her gaze zeroes in on the way Frank’s forearms flex as he and Micro lift an odd, ink-stained contraption that looks a little like a window over a few inches closer to the wall, it’s because Karen’s trying to figure out what the hell the thing is. That’s all.

And, maybe, she’s assessing the fallout from Friday night. But Frank looks fine, bandages on his forearm and some bruising — so slight, by his standards, that it hardly warrants consideration — notwithstanding. The sense of anticlimax leaves Karen bereft.

Somehow, she’d expected coming back here to entail at least a partial return to the headspace she’d been thrust into that night, the second she smelled blood in the alleyway. Instead, Karen’s walked into an impromptu party, the tension in her body a product of having steeled herself for a fight that obviously isn’t coming.

Everything looks so different in daylight.

She clears her throat. “What’s going on here?”

Micro meets her eyes as she stops at the head of the table. They grin. “We’re making merch for tour.” Their voice is eager, a little breathless. “Screen-printing shirts, gonna do some posters tomorrow,” Micro finishes.

So the machinery is some sort of printing press. Karen accidentally walked into a printmaking class once, during her first semester of college — had been looking for her Photography 101 course, but the art building was a navigational disaster, a victim of low-funding and bad architecture.

It explains the ink on Frank’s hands, too, and the squeegee resting on his side of the press. Micro grips a roller in one hand. The box in front of Kathy — close enough now for Karen to peer into — is half-filled with freshly dried and folded shirts. As she steps closer, Karen’s finally hit by the reek of ink, suddenly grateful for the open windows.

“You always make your own merch?” The questions keep coming. She can’t bury them. Karen spares a furtive glance to Frank on her right, hearing him in her head, clear as day: _You askin’ to ask?_

He makes eye contact with her, briefly. Offers a fractional incline of his chin. His features are relaxed — the slope of his brow, the bend of his mouth, all resting at ease in something akin to the expression Frank wears after shows, only less temporal.

She breaks eye contact. Her attention pings around the apartment: Micro, explaining that yes, Leatherneck make their own merch — that Micro and Rachel spent the past week scouring thrift shops for plain t-shirts and tank tops across all five boroughs. The bustle of Hell’s Kitchen serves as a backdrop to their voice. Karen realizes, too, that if she pays attention, she can hear noises through the apartment walls: echoes from the stairwell, the clang of pipes. Voices of other tenants, in the lull between songs. It borders on sensory overload. Karen reminds herself to breathe.

She still can’t see where the music’s coming from.

Frank is close enough now that Karen can get a good look at the tattoos on his arms, heretofore concealed by long sleeves. On his left bicep rests an eagle, globe and anchor of his own — not quite identical to Rachel’s, but close. _SEMPER FIDELIS_ curves over the eagle’s head, _U.S.M.C._ inscribed beneath the globe. The ink is more charcoal blue than black, faded enough that it looks like it’s always been there, a natural feature of Frank’s skin. More birthmark than tattoo.

Higher up on the opposite arm is another, bolder piece. Not fresh but undeniably younger, the dark ink more pronounced against Frank’s tanned skin (Karen’s awareness snags on that detail: that Frank goes sleeveless often enough for his shoulders to be dusted bronze). Abstracted shapes drawn in black take a moment to resolve themselves into an image Karen’s eyes can understand: a flame, representational rather than realistic — like something you’d find drawn on a cave wall to signify fire. The word _sigil_ enters Karen’s thoughts. Then the text of the tattoo comes into focus, encircling the flame: _What the hand, dare seize the fire?_

 _The Tyger_ , again. Something cool tickles the back of her throat.

Karen’s focus snaps then, like a rubber band pulled taut. She looks to Kathy, who’s returned to folding t-shirts, stacking them into the box and bobbing her head to the music. Karen traces the sound finally to an empty tin can resting on the nearest windowsill — someone’s dropped their cell phone inside, music gaining a metallic edge via the modest amplification. Kathy sings along quietly, _“They throw a war like a party!”_

It’s then that Micro drops their ink roller. “You want a bite to eat?” they ask, easy enough that relief edges at Karen’s consciousness. At least she’s not visibly freaking out. Not like Friday night, when —

Her eyes move back to the table, memory briefly re-writing the scene before her, turning her into an observer of her own memory: Frank shoving half a brownie towards her in the dark.

Karen swallows. Looks back up at Micro. Maybe she’s not so composed. Still, she nods, pushing a stray lock of hair behind one pink-tipped ear. “Sure.”

Micro’s smile broadens. Using a rag resting on the table, they wipe their hands before walking over. Karen pivots, tracks them.

When they pass her by to make their way towards Frank’s shitty excuse for a kitchen, Karen follows, immediately greeted by a tiny “H…hi, Karen.” It’s Joan — who Karen somehow didn’t even _notice_ — standing against the kitchenette’s counter, both hands cradled protectively against her middle. Karen barely avoids startling, fighting to keep her feet planted. Joan looks to the floor. Karen’s throat tightens with guilt instantaneously.

“Wanna grab some paper towels, Joan?” Micro inserts themselves into the space between the two women with ease. They’re careful, Karen notices, to tilt their head and meet Joan’s eyes as they speak, offering her an encouraging smile. “I gotta wash my hands.”  

They move to the sink, the sound of rushing water adding itself to the din a beat later. Karen snaps herself out of it, stepping closer to Joan. She notices, when the smaller woman turns away, that Micro’s cinnamon rolls are accompanied by a plate of brownies, a large thermos, and a roll of double-ply paper towels (not the crappy ones Frank keeps under the sink), all arranged on the postage stamp square of Frank’s counter. Joan tears off a few sheets and busies herself with depositing a cinnamon roll on each of them, cake server in hand. Karen takes a deep breath — they smell _incredible_ , a welcome counterpoint to the thick scent of ink.

“Can I help with anything?” Karen asks when she pulls to a stop beside Joan. She feels untethered, and a little silly, shifting on her feet.

“Oh, it’s al…alright,” Joan replies, sounding breathless and content all at once, just as Micro shuts off the tap. “I li…like helping with the food.”

“You made more brownies?” The questions are reflexive. Karen keeps her tone light.

“Mmn,” Joan murmurs, shaking her head. “They’re F-Frank’s.” She pauses for a long moment, eyes on the cinnamon roll balanced on the cake server in her hand. “He f…forgot them. The other night.”

Karen doesn’t have to see to know the back of her neck is tinted red, spreading up her throat to her cheeks. She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. _Of course he did._

“S’all good, though,” Micro quips, materializing on Joan’s other side. “Perks of being neighbors with Frank means you get to prescribe him baked goods at all times, right?”

The corner of Joan’s mouth twitches up, smile genuine but jittery. Karen’s brow furrows, watching her — the way she moves is endearingly hesitant, as if Joan’s wordlessly asking permission to occupy space. But Micro’s talent at drawing people out is undeniable. A soft joy writes itself across Joan’s face as they lean in and nudge her hunched shoulder with one of their own.

Joan turns, then, looking up at Karen through tousled bangs. “H…here,” she says, offering Karen a cinnamon roll ‘plated’ on a section of paper towel. She notices Karen’s eyebrow quirk. “Frank doesn’t ha…have any, uhm. Plates.”

Karen’s flush, though easing, still radiates in her cheeks as she accepts the pastry. “Thank you,” she replies. Then, looking over to Micro, adds, “And you.”

Micro flashes her a grin. “No worries,” they say, taking their own serving from Joan. “I like an excuse to bake. Merch party’s good as any.”

Just as Karen bites into the cinnamon roll — perfectly flaky despite being absolutely _caked_ in sugary glaze (infused with vanilla, if Karen can trust her palate) — another voice calls across the apartment, cutting through the quiet conversation between Kathy and Rachel, and the low sound of Frank loading ink onto the press.

“Hey Joan, can I get a cup of that coffee?” 

Karen wheels around at the sound of Spacker Dave’s voice. The toes of her Converse squeak against the hardwood floor.

He makes his way across the apartment from the direction of the bathroom. Karen notes the faint sound of a toilet flushing. Dave breaks into a surprised grin when he sees her, eyebrows jumping up his forehead. “Hey, Karen!” Metal flashes in the sunlight, rendering his already expressive face so vibrant as to be jarring. “I didn’t know you were coming! Awesome.” 

“Legs here’s gonna come on tour with us,” Kathy interjects, pushing up from where she’s sat on the floor to follow Dave to the kitchen. She’s beating the heat with cut-off sleeves of her own — apparently Karen missed the memo about a dress code — and Karen bites down hard on her tongue when she sees black and purple with a smattering of fresh scabs spread across Kathy’s shoulder. Again, Karen’s brain scrubs the tableau in front of her, slotting in the memory of Kathy throwing herself and her assailant into a brick wall. Karen looks down. There’s another bruise on Kathy’s knee.

“I’ll have some of that too, Joanie,” Kathy continues, “if ya don’t mind.”

Karen spares a glance for Joan, who’s currently pulling disposable coffee cups out of a tote bag perched on the counter, partly hidden behind a tall thermal carafe. She pushes one long sleeve up her arm before reaching for the pump at the top of the contraption. Again, her clothing is almost comically oversized — her arm appearing childishly slender reaching out from the bunched fabric. She begins filling cups, the rich scent of black coffee mixing with cinnamon and sunlight to make the tightness in Karen’s chest loosen, just slightly. It’s then that Karen realizes — 

“You don’t have a coffeemaker, Frank?” She sounds more offended than she means to. Her attention snaps back to him, and he looks up at the question, brow pinched. It seems impossible, considering the sheer _amount_ of coffee she’s seen him imbibe.

Kathy stops just in front of Karen and scoffs, her presence demanding attention. “Fucker drinks that instant shit. Joanie’s got the good stuff.”

At that Joan turns beside Karen, reaching out with two full cups. The herbal aroma flares Karen’s nostrils. Dave and Kathy accept their cups, smiling. “Thanks,” Dave says. Kathy echoes the sentiment, making grateful noises as she takes a long pull from hers.

Dave meets Karen’s eyes. “So you’re touring with Leatherneck?” he asks, lowering his coffee as he does. There’s an arch to one Irish-orange eyebrow, accentuated by the metal piercings hanging from it, three deep.

“Looks like it,” she replies; her thoughts on the prospect aren’t trustworthy. She doesn’t share them.

“Yeah, yeah,” Micro interjects. They gesture to the far back corner of Frank’s apartment with their cinnamon roll. “Y’all. Let’s take a break? Talk this shit over with Karen.”

They’re herding, Karen notes with an exhale that would be a snort if she had more breath in her lungs. Micro’s attention flits between Frank and Kathy — the two most likely to ignore the rest of the group.

Frank just grunts in response, frowning down at the press. There’s a fresh smudge of white ink near the hem of his tank top — Karen tracks it idly as Frank smoothes more pigment over the length of the screen before leaning forward, gripping the squeegee in two large hands and dragging it firmly from one end of the screen to the other.

Karen’s eyes trace from the inkstain on Frank’s shirt to his hands: skin going pale around the dark letters of his knuckle tattoos with the force exerted, the tendons in his forearms tightening and releasing as he moves. Blood rushes back into the skin of his fingers when he relaxes his hold — _PUNISHER_ emerging clearly through remnant bruising. It’s a striking duality: the destructive potential of Frank’s hands put aside to set ink to fabric, create something new.  

Ink gathers against the squeegee, scraped off the screen to leave a pale skull in its wake. Frank sniffs, sets the squeegee down and lifts the screen to reveal a stark, white skull transferred to what was a plain black t-shirt. It’s heavily stylized: cheekbones curved like hooks, teeth stretched nearly to the base of the shirtfront. The sockets are narrowed, brow ridge tilted down toward the face’s center. It looks focused and _angry_ , imparting the eerily specific sensation of being watched by something with no eyes.  

It’s a great design — one, Karen realizes with start, that she’s seen before. On Rachel’s leg, and Micro’s arm. She can only assume Kathy has one as well, even if Karen’s yet to see it. The perfect symbol for the four of them. For Leatherneck.

Karen clears her throat.

“Rrmph,” Kathy says, jolting Karen out of her meditation. Karen looks at her — the bassist’s lips pursed into a considerate frown around a mouthful of baked good as she nods. Despite her puffed cheeks, the expression is so _Frank-like_ that Karen’s stuck staring even after Kathy’s turned, whirling back across the apartment.

The shorter woman covers the distance in a handful of bouncing steps before full-on launching herself onto Frank’s bed. The mattress and metal frame creak as she does. Her ink-stained combat boots ruck up the hospital corners of Frank’s sheets and Karen has to swallow back the urge to advise her, _mind your manners_. In Karen’s head, the words ring out in a voice that sounds suspiciously like her grandmother’s. She tells it to shut the fuck up with a half-crazed laugh that never quite makes it out of her throat.

Dave perches on another box, this one secured shut with what looks to be half a roll’s worth of packing tape, pressed against the far wall. Rachel and Micro both drop to the floor and Joan, walking out from behind Karen, passes a cup of coffee to Rachel.

Kathy sits upright on Frank’s bed, her legs swinging against the mattress as she pats the newly opened spot next to her. “Over here, Joanie.”

Joan hides her smile by lowering her chin to her collarbone and crosses in front of Karen to sit beside Kathy. She sits gingerly, tucking her legs against her chest. The mattress doesn’t make a sound under her weight.

Micro reaches out a hand and pulls the brightly painted chair over from wherever it’s been stashed. The legs scrape against the floor, momentarily drowning out the music. Karen winces at the sound, but it melts away with relief when Micro offers, “Here, Karen.”

She sits, folding her legs carefully to one side before remembering with a self-deprecating huff that she isn’t wearing a skirt. Biting the inside of her lip, Karen wills herself to relax and readjusts, mindful not to spill crumbs on Frank’s floor. Then she looks up. 

Behind Micro and Rachel are more large metal shelves. Like all the shelving throughout Frank’s apartment, they’re laden heavy with an assortment of cargo: everything from zines, toolboxes, half-gutted sound equipment, an entire case of canned green beans, to —

“Do you have a dog, Frank?” Karen asks, twisting in her chair to look back over at him. He’s still at the table, finishing a shirt. All at once she can’t seem to decide if she wants to be looking at him — arms flexing as he pulls a tool across the screen — or at the bag of puppy chow sitting on the top shelf, and the more-than-slightly-chewed blue fabric bin on the bottom one, spilling over with half-eaten tennis balls and assorted toys.

A dog. Where? How?

“I foster,” Frank answers, perfunctory as ever. But when he spares a glance her direction — takes in the look on Karen’s face — he continues, “Friend of mine works at a shelter, gets more litters than they know what to do with.” Matter-of-fact. Frank lays the t-shirt he’s just finished printing flat on the table and closes the press. Karen watches his boots scrape across the floor as he moves to the sink, washing his hands with dollar store dish soap. When he realizes she’s still looking at him, he adds, “I’ll take a pup or two when we’re off tour. Then they get adopted out.”

“He’s being noble,” Micro interjects, meeting Karen’s eyes and waving their hand, pageant-style.

She’s still trying to translate the expression when Kathy fills in Micro’s meaning: “Frankie takes in the dogs people’d rather shoot than give a fighting chance,” she says, dragging Karen’s wide-eyed attention to the other side of the studio.

“They don’t _shoot them_ ,” Micro squeaks. They roll their eyes. Karen’s focus ping pongs between the two of them. Micro gives her an apologetic look. “Frank usually works with problem breeds.”

“On account a’ the fact that Frankie’s a problem breed himself,” Kathy finishes.

Frank huffs. Karen barely catches his muttered, “ _Chrissake_.”

Karen opens her mouth to speak as Frank dries his hands on his tank-top. (Collar pulling downward, revealing more of his chest tattoo, the dark, texturized ink competing for real estate with Frank’s tan.) “Problem breeds?”

Frank hums, meeting Karen’s eyes a moment before frowning down at his hands, rubbing his palms together. When he answers, his voice is quiet. “Pits, mostly.”

Karen’s about to ask something else — she’s not sure what, only knows this is a thread of personal history she wants to pull on — when Micro interrupts. “They’re _so_ cute Karen, ugh, I want a dog —” 

Frank snorts. “You gotta be around more for a dog,” he says. He drags over a metal folding chair and sets it next to Karen. He doesn’t look at her as he sits. Instead, his focus is locked on Micro, admonishing. “You gonna make Sarah look after the thing while you’re gone? Feed the dog, walk the dog, clean the dog?” He lifts a cinnamon roll to his mouth, practically unhinging his jaw to shove a solid third of it inside. 

When did he pick up food? Karen wracks her brain for the moment, but can’t call it up. Overstimulated, trying to absorb too much at once. Again, Karen is presented with a different side of Frank Castle, something worthy of study even as she tries to cut off that line of thinking; stop approaching Frank like a question in need of an answer.

Micro rolls their eyes, sighing. “I know, I know.”

Kathy snickers, the same sound that Karen used to hear in elementary school, from the back of the classroom when the class clown got chewed out by teacher.

Something catches in Karen’s teeth. She turns her own attention onto Micro, who’s tucking contentedly into their cinnamon roll, untroubled by Frank’s scolding. She voices the question before she thinks to form it entirely. “Are you and Sarah…”

Micro laughs around their food, deep dimples appearing in the apples of their cheeks. “Nah,” they reply once they’ve swallowed. “Used to, but turns out when you’re not pretending to be cis your interests change.” They give Karen a closed-mouth smile reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat, even without teeth. They shrug. “Whoonu?”

Kathy nods, lifting her cup in a toast. “A-fuckin’-men to that.” She punctuates the phrase with a long swallow of coffee.

“As thrilling as your sexual exploits are, don’t we have shit to do?” Rachel interjects. Her words are firm, but spoken with a muted grin and a spark in her gray eyes that rewrite the tone entirely. She pulls a folded piece of paper out from the back pocket of her cargo shorts. 

Rachel unfolds it onto the spot of bare floor they’ve all congregated around. It’s a map — the same one she’d had on her that first afternoon that Karen had spent with Leatherneck at the Safehouse. Karen recognizes the purple highlighter that marks their tour route.

Her hands smoothing over the map, Rachel looks up, meeting Karen’s eyes from across their misshapen circle. “So, Legs, what’s the status?”

Karen blinks, not understanding the question at first. There’s a beat of awkward silence, the slide of five pairs of eyes to Karen. _Shit, shit, shit._ “Uh,” she manages, momentarily at a loss. Then she swallows, tucks the wisps of hair that have escaped her bun back behind one ear. “Trish is pretty open — I mean. She wants me to cover the tour and…”

She slows, surveying the room. Pressure builds at the back of her throat, reaching down to the base of her spine. Leatherneck & Co. wait expectantly — Kathy sprawled like a hyena at rest, Micro and Dave offering encouraging smiles. Frank and Rachel remain expressionless, listening intently. Joan looks at her hands.

Karen swallows the calcified mass of nerves in her throat. Grinds her molars together before continuing, “It’s a short tour, right? So I could probably cover the whole thing. Photograph the shows — yours and The Defenders —” the aside is deliberate, Leatherneck’s newfound acceptance of coverage taken with seven grains of salt. She wants to be clear that her attention will be divided between the two bands, that she won’t be a nuisance. A breeze reaches in through the windows and stirs the baby hairs at the back of her neck as she continues, “Maybe record some audio, interview folks at shows, if they’re up for it. Post to the blog.” She shrugs, spares a glance around the room once more. “Work the merch booth?”

It’s a feeble attempt at humor, but it draws a giggle from Micro anyhow. Karen’s thankful for it.

They all look at one another. Micro shrugs. “What? Sounds good to me. It’s not like we’re good at working the booth anyway. Kathy always insults someone.” 

“Not my fault my charm’s lost on people,” Kathy retorts without missing a beat, flipping Micro the bird as she finishes off her coffee.

“Charm,” Rachel echoes, dry. Micro’s giggle intertwines with a low snicker from Frank, and Karen turns to look at him; the way the lines in his face deepen when he laughs, cheeks curving around his mouth like parentheses.

“Fuck all of ya,” Kathy laughs. Even — surprisingly — Joan grins at this. It’s her smile that slows the conversation, everyone seeming to notice at once.

Dave leans forward in his seat, setting his coffee on the floor beside his ratty, worn out Vans. “That sounds really cool. I’d read the hell out of your blog.”

The sentence gives Karen pause. She blinks, her jaw working of its own accord as she looks over at Dave. He answers with a bright smile, piercings catching sunlight. For a second Karen gets the vivid impression that even his freckles are made of metal, that the piercings are organic features of his face. She can’t imagine what he’d look like without them, so she stops trying. 

His eyes are very kind.

“I. Thanks, Dave,” she replies, several decibels quieter than before.

“ _Spacker_ Dave,” he corrects her almost absent-mindedly, still smiling as he swings up from his seat and walks towards the kitchen. By the single-minded focus on his face, Karen would guess he’s angling for another cinnamon roll.

“Mhm,” echoes Frank. He licks a comically large glob of frosting off his thumb, lips smacking as he does. A gregarious eater if Karen’s known one. “Sounds fair.” 

She shouldn’t be surprised by his openness, but still — the back of her brain buzzes with Ellison’s denial, Matt’s taciturn surprise. The impressed, somewhat patronizing respect people keep offering her upon learning that she had the gall to talk to Frank Castle in the first place. She’s caught navigating between myth and reality, and nothing seems to fucking fit. Her gut is learning a different truth than the one she’s been sold.

Karen’s not, she reminds herself, supposed to trust that. But the more time passes, the more she thinks that, maybe, everyone has been too transfixed by Frank’s screams to bother listening to him speak.

“You’d have to square the coverage with Red n’ friends,” Frank continues, jerking Karen’s attention back to the present moment. He shrugs, lips pursed in a contemplative pout. 

The way Frank conceptualizes The Defenders — _Red n’ friends_ — draws a small laugh from Karen, the sensation ripping through her chest despite its quiet. She covers it by adding, “Trish’ll get Jessica to take care of it.”

“Huh.” Frank grunts, pensive. Rearranging his mental file with the input of new information, scrubbing whatever he’d previously understood about Karen’s boss.

“Well, shit, Legs —”

Kathy’s aside is cut off by heavy footsteps, and staccato muttering in a language Karen doesn’t understand punctuated by the click-click of a lighter igniting. She reels, craning her neck and staring in surprise when she finds a stocky figure in a leather jacket and cut-off denim shorts standing in the open door of Frank’s apartment.

Everything about them is… not _small_ , but compact: broad shoulders and thick leg muscles heavy on their short frame. They’re built like a human wrecking ball, a silhouette made all the more unique by wild, dark hair that juts out in every direction.

They seem content to remain planted in the doorway, lighting the thick cigar that’s tucked in one corner of their mouth, framed by overgrown sideburns. They shove their phone in the pocket of their jacket — their cut-offs, Karen notes, seem to be missing pockets.

“Hey man, you’re back!” Spacker Dave, hospitable as ever, manages to call out around a mouthful of cinnamon roll, forging a path back to his seat.

The new arrival exhales a thick cloud of smoke, sliding his Zippo into another jacket pocket with the same hand still holding the cigar. When he speaks, his voice scratches Karen’s ear. “Laura’ll watch Daken for ‘nother coupla’ hours. Want me to go get more —”

As he takes in the scene in Frank’s apartment, his question halts in his throat, eyes landing on Karen. He gives her a weaselly grin. “Hey bub. You’re the reporter?”

Karen’s cheeks burn. “Uhm. Yes,” she breathes, snapping herself up out of her chair. She takes a few long steps forward, offering a hand because it’s the polite thing to do.

 He is incredibly, _conspicuously_ short. She has to practically tuck her chin to her collar to maintain eye contact, and abruptly recognizes him as the guy with the jacket ( _WEAPON X_ emblazoned across the shoulders, hard to forget) she’d photographed what feels like years ago outside The Safehouse. Without permission. Karen chews on her tongue as her stomach chews on itself. _How does he know_ her _?_

“Karen Page,” she finishes forcefully, locking her elbow, hand still outstretched.

He takes her hand, though it’s clear he’d rather take the piss out of her for offering it in the first place, given the bemused quirk of his mouth (which he barely hides by shoving the cigar back between his teeth). His grip is shockingly firm, skin rough against Karen’s. “Logan. Frienda’ Frank’s. Was just out convincing my sister to watch my kid — sorry I missed ya comin’ in.”

“Oh,” Karen breathes, dropping the handshake. It’s an odd batch of information to parse. She tries to reconcile the cigar smoke that Logan exhales towards the floor — keeping it out of Karen’s face, thankfully — and the image she’d gotten of him at The Safehouse with _fatherhood_.

Or, perhaps stranger, the way he knocks fists with Frank when he sits down in her chair. It’s such an innocuous gesture, so familiar and disarmingly youthful to see from Frank that Karen can’t quite catch her breath; overwhelmed enough that it doesn’t occur to her to be irritated that Logan just stole her seat.

“Y’know,” Karen starts, trying to be heard over the conversation that strikes up between Logan and Micro as soon as the former sits, “if we’ve covered everything… I can — should. Uhm. Head out.”

It’s Frank and Spacker Dave who turn their heads in her direction first. They’re quickly followed by the rest.

“Hey,” Frank starts, gruff. His brow furrows. “You don’t gotta —”

But Karen cuts him off, gaze sweeping the room. The band, Joan and Dave, the new addition of Logan; flyers on the walls, t-shirts drying on the rack, chewed tennis balls on the floor and a bundle of leashes and collars in varying states of wear and tear hanging from the edge of a shelf. It all crowds in, leaving Karen with the sensation of being stared down.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s okay,” she lies, piling up words in a flawed attempt to cover her unease. Her voice is high-pitched and overly polite in a way she knows sounds panicked and _fake_ , but she barrels forward. A wall stacks up around her, constructed of playing cards and the desperate hope that no one will try and knock it down. “I have… deadlines.” That, at least, sounds legitimate.

Micro frowns. The pout is obvious, and slices through Karen’s chest, drawing guilt like blood. “O-kay,” they sigh. “We’ll see you before tour though, right?”

She nods convulsively, offering a weak smile and a weaker “Sure, yeah,” before stepping out the door and into the hallway. The conversation in Frank’s apartment strikes up again. Their voices chase Karen down the stairwell.

Regret washes over her almost instantly, strong enough that she has to take a moment on the sidewalk outside Frank’s building: a deep breath, hand pressed to the exposed skin of her chest, just above her shirt collar. Her pulse thuds against her palm, oxygen struggling to travel through the tightness of her throat. She pulls her phone from her pocket, distracting herself with long-ignored texts.

 

* * *

 

 

 **Karen Page (802-548-3020)  
** _Hey, you still up for that drink?_

 **Foggy Nelson (212-697-9049)  
** _Hell yes! Meet me at Josie’s in an hour?_

 

* * *

 

Foggy Nelson is late. The bar he asks Karen to meet at is surprisingly busy for a late Sunday afternoon, considering it looks like the kind of place the brunch crowd wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. A handful of men sit at the bar, in various stages of head-hanging drunkenness. Another, larger group is gathered around some pool tables in the back. Karen can hear conversation, laughter, the crack of cue against pool balls. A deep groan as someone sinks the eight.

The neon sign in the window is so old Karen can hear it hum over the damp whine of the sole air conditioner above the bar. Silver paper streams out from the vents, some kind of shitty tinsel. It does little to make the bar cooler, in temperature or otherwise.

There’s an older woman behind the counter, wearing a red and black checked flannel vest (the sleeves, Karen presumes, cut off to beat the heat) unbuttoned to reveal a shirt underneath that might have once been white. It reads, _I CAME OUT OF THE CLOSET FOR THIS?_ Her wide, strong arms bear sunspots and faded tattoos done in old school style — Karen’s pretty sure one curved, blueish shape high on the woman’s shoulder is meant to be an anchor. She speaks in a low voice when Karen approaches the bar, soliciting an order.

“Uh, just water please?” Karen figures that’s safe.

The woman answers with a dry chuckle before turning to get a glass. Karen wonders what the hell possessed Foggy to tell her to come here. What the hell possessed Karen to text him back, agree to this. 

“Karen!” Foggy calls, the bell on the door jingling as it swings shut behind him. She raises her head. He’s grinning, symmetrical dimples appearing in his flushed cheeks. His hair is in a low bun similar to her own, a few tendrils of honey blonde — damp with sweat — framing his face. He’s wearing khaki shorts with a white and gray floral printed chambray shirt. When he grips the bar to lower himself onto the stool beside Karen’s, she notes his nails are a matte salmon pink.

The bartender — _Josie_ , Karen presumes — sets a glass of water in front of her as Foggy sits. She takes in his appearance with a scoff, rolling her eyes and assuring Karen, “You can do _so_ much better, love,” before reaching under the bar. She comes up again with a beer in hand, cracking it open and placing it in front of Foggy.

Who squawks, indignant, at the insult. “Karen is my _friend_. This is a friendship outing, Josie,” Foggy corrects, tilting his bottle toward Josie and then Karen. His grin is unmoved, despite the insult (or maybe because of it — he seems the type to parlay petty aggressions into a crooked kind of goodwill, an opportunity to expand the boundaries of his own magnanimity). Josie answers with an unimpressed snort, gruff smile on her face as she makes her way to the other end of the bar. Foggy takes a quick pull from his beer. Karen watches.

Then, just as Karen lifts her glass to her mouth, Foggy reaches out and stops her. “Wait,” he says, brow folding in concern. “Is that water?”

Karen blinks, tilts her head in a flash of confusion and, well. Frustration. This has been a weird enough day as it is — the image of a recently fled Leatherneck rising to the fore of her mind — and Foggy’s really going to police what Karen is _drinking_? Here, in _this_ dive?

“Yes,” Karen replies, jerking her hand from Foggy’s.

“We… don’t drink the water at Josie’s.” Karen raises her eyebrow at the warning implicit in the sentence, and Foggy’s use of the royal we, as he continues, “It’s. Definitely not safe.” He gestures to his beer. “That’s why we — _I_ —” Karen’s attention piques at the pronoun switch, “— drink bottled.” He smiles. As if that’s not the weirdest and least confidence-inspiring thing to say about a bar.

As her mouth opens to protest, Foggy leans over the bar and shouts, “Josie! A beer for Miss Page, here.” He pauses, then turns back to her, “Unless you want the hard stuff…?”

“What,” Karen breathes. It’s not exactly a question.

“Beer,” Foggy finishes with confidence, word punctuated by a single nod. He settles back on his stool. “Listen,” he starts, turning to face Karen directly. “Josie’s isn’t… the fanciest place, but it’s _our_ place, right? Me and Matt have been going here since we got fake IDs. Josie doesn’t card us, we use our legal know-how to help her keep the landlord off her back, and we drink for free!”

Josie, having returned to their end of the bar to serve Karen’s beer, looks up from her work. With a long-suffering sigh, she says, “You do not drink for free.”

Foggy makes an abortive gesture with the hand holding his beer. “We’ll agree to disagree.”

Josie sets Karen’s new drink on the bartop and rolls her eyes. “See what I told you?” she half-mutters before leaving them once more.

Karen stares, wraps her hand around her beer while she does the mental gymnastics to keep up. At least the bottle is cold against her hand. She nearly presses it to her forehead.

 _Shit_. She’s tired of trying to find purchase in the routines of other people’s lives.

But this is — better, than the disarming osmosis she experiences around Leatherneck. Karen doesn’t know what to do with the fact that all of her social interactions have been colonized by Frank Castle and his network of unfathomable punks.

She _should_ be at a bar with someone like Foggy. These are the friends she’s supposed to have, and this is how she can go about making them.

“So you and Matt… this is your regular spot?” she asks before throwing back a swig of beer. She swallows the wince that tries to climb up her throat and onto her face when she realizes she’s drinking Guinness, focusing instead on the gears churning in her head: the fact that the few times she’s interacted with Matt and Foggy it’s been in the context of The Defenders, and it follows that Karen would peg The Chaste as their typical haunt; that Matt’s girlfriend _works_ there, and they probably _do_ manage to get free drinks. “I thought The Chaste was —”

Foggy shrugs. “That’s kind of a new thing,” he replies. A spiderweb crack of bitterness appears in the lines of his face, a new heaviness in the way his forearms rest on the bar, elbows bent outward like wings. “Used to be a once in a while spot, ‘cause Matt and Claire’ve been doing the whole Jim and Pam thing for years.” He shrugs again, the hunch remaining in his shoulders as he continues, “Now that he’s in the band, it’s… changed.”

Journalistic instinct takes over, a natural switch in the cadence of Karen’s thoughts. She shifts in her seat. “You’re upset about it,” she surmises.

Foggy winces, shrugging yet again — a frustrated tic he seems to have latched onto. One hand releases the hold on his beer, lifting in a gesture that’s at once confused and guilty. He looks vaguely at a loss, searching for the right words. “I… No. It’s just. Matt’s, uh.” Foggy sighs. Both hands abandon his beer completely as he scrubs them over his face, combing them back through his hair and pulling loose the little bun at the base of his skull.

Karen waits.

“Matt’s been burned before, in bands,” Foggy starts with another forceful sigh. “And y’know, I thought he was getting his shit together. We were gonna apply to law school together. Go to Columbia, open our own practice…”

Karen tries to envision Matt Murdock in a suit and tie. Lawyering. He’s certainly contrary enough; can get the bone of a dispute between his teeth and argue it for hours. She’s already seen him do it over innocuous shit like Star Wars continuity.

But she’s also seen him _play_. And Karen’s no musician, but she’s spent enough time studying them over the past few months that she can recognize when someone’s at home with a band behind them.

She tucks her opinion away, setting it aside with the abandoned glass of water and sipping at her beer. Tilts her head before needling, “You don’t want him to go on tour?”

Landmine question. Foggy explodes, surging forward in his seat, face going pink as he unloads, “I don’t want him to screw up his _life!_ ” Foggy’s eyes — a curious blue-green, skewed heavily towards the green, like patches of sky bursting through foliage — are wide, emphatic. “A band? Christ, we’re — _he’s_ almost twenty-eight. How the hell is he supposed to…” Foggy trails off for a long moment, his eyes searching Karen’s face.

She keeps her expression open. Neutral. Foggy sees what he wants to see echoed in her features.

He settles, leaning back a little on the barstool. “Y’know,” he says, gesturing vaguely with one hand. “Make a living. Settle down. Be a _grown-up_.”

The speech drums up a series of memories: Micro Lieberman handing Karen a calendar of events; Kathy O’Brien’s harsh tone, talking about people being _in danger_ ; Rachel Cole-Alves, gathering first aid supplies and setting them down beside her bleeding friend with a determined glint in her slate gray eyes. Frank Castle, speaking in a clipped voice about fostering pit bull pups because no one else will have them.

“Do you really think that?” Karen asks, the words crawling up and out of her throat like worms in grave dirt. Her voice is softer than she intends.

She’s frozen, one elbow braced against the sticky bartop, fingers pressed into the narrow mouth of her bottle of Guinness. Watching Foggy for a response.

The question seems to slow him down some. His mouth works, empty. His eyes forfeit a bit of their wideness, both losing focus and gaining a new, more specific kind. Pupils expanding in low light. Someone behind them switches on the Yankees game.

All baseball announcers sound the same — ever since she was a kid. For a moment, Karen waits to hear who they’re playing.

Tampa. She exhales a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

“I don’t know,” Foggy says, finally, releasing a frustrated sigh. He turns from Karen, looking head-on at a sign behind the bar that reads _ABSOLUTELY NO TABS_. Foggy hangs his head, wraps his hands around the back of his neck.

“I mean —” Karen cuts herself off. She can’t track the path of the sentence, has no idea what she meant to say. Sighs. Swallows whatever mess of half-formed thoughts is sitting in her throat. “Like, I mean, look at Frank —”

Foggy lifts his head, bewildered. Opens his mouth, once, twice. He looks _petulant_.  

“— Leatherneck,” Karen amends. She takes a deep breath. “They’re all…adults. With jobs.”

_Wow, great Karen. Really great._

She can feel her face start to burn, looking down at the bar. The pad of her index finger presses into the spot where her tinted chapstick’s rubbed off onto the mouth of her beer. She continues, a resolve she doesn’t fully understand driving her forward, caught just beneath the surface of her articulation, “They’re not _lawyers_ , but they’re not incompetent, Foggy.” Karen shakes her head before finally looking back at Foggy over her shoulder. “The things they do…”

Micro offering Donny licorice. ( _He looked faint,_ they’d explained later. _Figured the sugar would help._ ) Kathy throwing herself and the goon in her hold against the alley wall and injuring herself in the process. Frank pulling another off Rachel, just in time.

When Karen speaks again, she’s surprised by the certainty in her voice; the way the words skip off her tongue as though her mouth can’t make the shapes fast enough: “They do more for people in Hell’s Kitchen than anyone who can convince a jury that someone beat the shit out of someone else by the time the case goes to trial four months after the fact.”

“By beating them up first?” Foggy squints at her, incredulous. “You really think that’s what adults do?”

Karen’s chest seizes up. The background sounds and smells of Josie’s momentarily blink out of existence, her hands burning even as she grips her cold beer tighter. She can smell gunpowder, feel sudden pain blooming in her gut — a phantom rifle kick. Karen grinds her teeth. “It’s about making it right _in the moment,_ ” she spits. “And encouraging others to do the same. To give a shit.” She reaches for her purse, begins to fork out cash. “That’s all I meant.”

Foggy panics, clearly spun. “Karen, Jesus, I didn’t —” He reaches out to touch her shoulder, keep her at the bar.

Karen pulls back sharply, something between a flinch and a refusal. “It’s fine, Foggy,” she snaps back, dropping her cash on the counter. She raises a hand in warning, the _don’t touch me_ writ clear in the air between them. “I get it.” Meets his eyes, jaw tight. “I’m guessing Matt does too.”

He might say something, as she walks away, but Karen isn’t listening. She walks out of the bar, squinting fiercely into the afternoon sun that floods her senses when she opens the door and doesn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

He could call her.

It takes him a few days, to arrive at that determination, the loose end of Karen’s abrupt goodbye at his apartment hanging from the back of Frank’s thoughts. He ought to tie it off.

She’s always made first contact, always operated on his terms. Makes sense that it’d shake out that way — she’s doing her job. For all intents and purposes, they’re _working_ together, not arranging playdates. But the imbalance doesn’t sit right. Frank remembers her pale hands fluttering around her purse strap; the way her wide blue eyes had swept across the room without really looking at any of them. And then she was out the door.

Karen wasn’t _okay_ , when she left. The knowledge weighs heavy on the back of Frank’s neck, a sensation that feels a lot like guilt. He’s standing near the dead center of his apartment, caught between the bathroom and kitchen when his mother’s voice rises out of the mire of his thoughts: _You have to_ talk _to people, honey. It takes practice._ There are echoes of her voice, too, in the appreciation that he _should_ call Karen — that it’s the right thing to do.

The truer, more disconcerting piece of the picture is that Frank wants to.

His phone is on the kitchen counter. An unexpected tendril of anxiety curls through his throat when he picks it up.

She answers on the fifth ring.

“Frank?”

“Hey.”

“…Hey.”

It’s during the brief pause that follows that Frank realizes he doesn’t know precisely what to say, only that he should be the one talking. _Christ_.

They both start speaking at once, Frank’s “I was—” overlapping Karen’s “Did you—” before they stop, the line going quiet. Frank exhales through his nose, shaking his head in the solitary calm of his apartment. He braces a hand against the edge of the counter, eyes drawn to the dust motes lit up by the sun streaming through his kitchen window; the way they circle each other, suspended mid-air.

He hears a huff that might be a laugh, embarrassed sounding, from Karen’s end. Imagines her ducking her head, reaching with one hand to clasp the back of her neck.

Frank tries again. “Can we talk?”

A beat.

“Uh… yeah! Yes. What did you… right now, or…?” 

He grunts, stepping out of the kitchenette. Another untread path. He can guess the shape of her schedule – meetings set for noon sharp. Her lunch break, probably. But it hasn’t ever been his place to ask before. Frank wanders across the open space of his apartment, sparing a look to the clock beside his bed. It’s mid-morning. “You got time?”

“Y-yeah,” she breathes into the line. He still sees her in his head: a surprised twitch of her nose, doe-eyed and blinking.

There’s another break, a lull of uncertainty on both their parts. The sound of their breathing fills the call. Half a dozen words push at the boundaries of Frank’s skull. He can’t make heads or tails of them, only feels the shapeless weight bearing down on his tongue.

“Noon? The, uh, usual place?” Karen asks.

It’s enough to make him pause, now. _Usual place_. Frank huffs, corner of his mouth twitching. Supposes they do got a spot and a time — a conclusion which carries the full, bitter taste of black coffee on its back. Eggs don’t sound too bad either. “You got it.”

“Okay,” Karen replies.

“Okay.” His own confirmation is soft.

She hangs up first, after a lingering silence.

 

* * *

  

To Frank’s surprise, she’s waiting for him outside the diner. Leaning against the corner of the building, summer sun reflecting off the metal and glass exterior and refracting in her hair. He has to blink when he first catches sight of her: hair more gold than blond, pale skin a little startling under direct sunlight. She’s wearing a blue and white floral sleeveless dress, hair falling over one shoulder in a long wave. It obscures half of her face as she frowns at the phone in her hand. For a moment, he wonders if she’s waiting for a table. It’s a Tuesday, noon. No fucking way.

He crosses the intersection, slows to a stop just at the corner Lou’s rests on. “Hey.”

She tugs her head up, look on her face like if she were to open her eyes wide enough she might be able to take in not only Frank’s form in front of her, but the stretch of time she’d lost absorbed in… whatever the hell she’d been doing on her phone.

“Hey,” Karen says, reaching up to push her hair out of her face. Grey polish on her nails reflects the metal behind her, gathering blue tones from her eyes and dress. Her mouth twitches, the briefest upturn of her lips.

“Somethin’ going on?” he asks, jerking his chin to the door of the diner behind her before dragging his gaze to the phone in her hand.

“What?” Karen breathes. She looks him up and down, apparently searching for something in his face. Frank watches her brow knit itself together as she pulls the generous bow of her bottom lip between her teeth. It takes her a moment, but she eventually follows his line of sight to her phone. “Oh.” There’s that flush, reaching up from her exposed collarbones to the underside of her chin. She looks at the phone in her hand before sighing and tucking the thing away.

Karen shakes her head, slight roll to her eyes. “No, just Ellison –” she looks up then, catches the question forming on his face and continues, “– my editor from Noisey. He’s pissed AltPress is getting my tour write-ups.” She’s not lying.

“Huh.”

Beat of silence, filled with the sonic clutter of the city behind him. She’s looking at his face, her mouth slightly open. The day is glaringly bright — Karen’s eyes comprised of crystalline shards of light and dark blue, contrasting more sharply than Frank’s ever seen them; darkest at the edge of her irises, light towards the center. Her pupils constrict in the sunlight.

“—Lunch?” Karen asks, with a loose wave of her hand towards the building behind her. There’s a hitch in her voice. Frank can’t tell if she’s finishing a sentence she started in her head or if he just missed the beginning of it entirely.

He nods, tucking his hands into his pockets as he lets Karen take the lead. Their entrance is marked by bells jingling on the door, crystal clear in the relative hush of the diner. Place’s pretty empty: just a few lone businessman at the counter and two bored teenagers in a corner booth near the front, picking at a single milkshake and a basket of fries. Got a tightly packed bag next to ‘em in the booth, large and stained. Frank gets a good look at one of them: their adolescent features are drawn, expression aimless. Until Frank meets their gaze as he and Karen walk past, their brown eyes narrowing in a flash of defensive anger. When Frank answers with a nod, they glare at him another few seconds before turning back to their food, thin shoulders hunched over the tabletop. Frank keeps walking, the kids’ position noted on his radar.

Karen makes it to the counter first, greeted by the same waitress from before. Frank doesn’t remember her name, but there’s recognition in her eyes all the same, the tired lines of her face tilting up in an honest smile. “Take a seat wherever you like,” she instructs before retreating to the kitchen, rattling off an order.

Frank follows Karen to the far corner, same table they’ve always used. First time, Karen had taken the corner seat — eye on the door, back against the wall. Second, Frank got there before her and claimed it for himself.

Today, Karen slides into the side of the booth facing the wall without so much as a backwards glance.

Frank pauses, exhaling heavily through his nose. Watches the strap of Karen’s purse slip off one bare shoulder after she’s taken the seat. He sits down across from her.

Her face is a network of barely contained questions, gathered in the curve of her mouth, the narrow crease between her pale eyebrows. No use trying to beat around the bush with anyone, least of all her. He asks before she can: “Why’d you leave?”

Karen digests the question quickly — so quick, Frank figures she was already preparing her answer. She’s looking at the table, fiddling with her hair when she replies, “I had, ah. Work.”

 _Bullshit_. “Deadlines,” he confirms, swaying in place.

Her answering nod is slow, two rolling bobs of her chin before she says, “Right.”

“Right.” He blinks at her, heavy, before tilting his eyes downward, pulling his hands from his pockets and resting them on the table. He frowns at his knuckles. Cracks the joints in his right hand and looks out the window. His brow is still folded, jaw ticcing. Turning the excuse she’s just doubled down on over in his thoughts, weighing it against her sudden exit.

It’s hard to reconcile the caginess of her words with her physicality. Whether Karen likes it or not, there’s nothing subtle about the way her face, her body expresses itself. Joy, hesitation, nerves. That zero to sixty temper of hers. It’s hard to be pissed about her lying to him when she’s so goddamn bad at it.

Something scratches, in Frank’s head. That he might have it wrong — not the fact of her dishonesty, but the _why_. She asked to write the piece about him. She didn’t ask to go on tour. That’s an assignment, the brainchild of Karen’s boss and the fucking rich kid from The Defenders who’s apparently nursing a crush on Frank for reasons that are beyond him. Maybe Karen’s had enough, got the first piece written and is ready to move onto the next. Only now she’s stuck chronicling Frank and his band for another month because people have up and decided they’re interested.

The way she’d extracted herself from his apartment, she could just be trying to catch her goddamn breath before having to spend two weeks in a metal tube with his spooky ass and _Kathy_ to boot.

Which — isn’t Frank’s problem. Karen’s got a job to do.

But.

Frank hums, looking over Karen’s shoulder at the kids in the booth. The slowness of their picking over their food, stretching the meal. Phantom hunger extends its claws through Frank’s middle. He sits with it, relegates it to the white noise at the boundaries of his thoughts, same as he did in the desert; and later, back on domestic soil, humping his ruck up 59th street.

Looks back at Karen’s face. “The article,” he starts, then pulls up short. Karen slips her bottom lip between her teeth, but otherwise goes very, very still.

He stares at her with a measured calm, uses the hiccup in his thought process to wait her out, let her settle while he thinks of what to say. He doesn’t start speaking until she meets his eyes; until they’re both _present_. “It’s good work.”

There’s a beat where Frank half expects her to assume he’s giving her shit and start acting pissy. Instead Karen’s shoulders drop, eyes widening a fraction — a degree of relief warring with her natural skepticism. “Yeah?” Her voice is clipped, toneless.

Frank can practically see her fight to keep from demanding more. Hears the impatient scuff of her heels against the linoleum floor.

Fact is, he hadn’t read it ‘till after the fight. Micro’d given him the CliffNotes version before their show — enough that Frank could get Karen riled by dropping Gunner’s name. (Which she’d reacted to predictably: a simmering anger at the indignity of being caught in her own bullshit.)

No. Frank had walked his ass to the public library on 10th and given the harried librarian at the information services desk his library card for an hour of computer time to read about his own life.

“Yeah,” he reaffirms, nodding his head to a low, chugging sound that reaches from the crawlspace of his thoughts and settles, faint, in his ears. Windshield wipers. He doesn’t dwell on it, knows Karen can’t hear; that it isn’t real. (Doesn’t know if the sound was real then, if there’d been a storm or maybe a switch flipped by mistake, courtesy of a twisted steering wheel.) “Effective.”

Something in Karen’s expression shatters, the tension gone from her mouth a split second before a hairline fracture reaches the rest of her body and cracks that open, too; shoulders dropping down, elbows sliding from their strained perch at the very edge of the formica tabletop as Karen leans forward. Her eyes seem less —

Not wide — they’re fucking saucers, round as Frank’s ever seen. But they’re less. Fixed. Alive in ways he’s only caught flashes of before: when she’d land a good jab with her line of questioning, sink her nails into an answer she didn’t like and _tear_ ; once or twice with Micro when she didn’t seem to think anybody was looking. Like the solid surface of crystalline blue has broken away to reveal a deeper vibrance underneath; a paper thin layer of ice, snapping under the barest pressure.

Her control slips, too, around her mouth, bright pink lips curving up into a smile that’s more self-satisfied than she’d like, probably, one thin dimple emerging in her left cheek.

She’s so damn pleased, a chuckle percolates up from the center of Frank’s chest just as she replies, “Good.”

“Coffee?” The waitress asks, materializing beside their table and lifting the pot into Frank’s line of sight. She’s got a smile tucked into the worn lines of her mouth. “Fresh pot.”

Frank offers her a smile of his own, eyes flicking down to read her name tag: _Jean_ . Right. He flips over the mug on the table, knowing he won’t remember it in a few minutes. “Please,” he says, pushing the ceramic closer to her with his knuckle. Gives her a _thank you_ when the mug is filled.

Karen’s smile remains bright, turned on their waitress. That dimple again. Jean offers the pot to Karen, and she says, “Sure,” in an easy tone, holding her mug out. “Thanks,” she says, softer, after Jean’s done. Karen lifts the coffee with both hands to her face and breathes in the steam.

“I’ll let y’all have a minute with those menus,” Jean says by way of goodbye. Throws Frank another smile which he answers with a tilt of his mug.

Karen looks at him again once she’s taken her sip, caught between familiar caution and the liquid dynamism she’s so far only inhabited in brief bursts. “I — uh.” There’s the tell, the come-down. She sits back a bit, looks to be gathering her resources. The moment passed. Tucks one strand of hair behind her ear, bracelets sliding against her wrist as she does. “I wanted you to like it.”

He snorts, deep. Can’t help it — bitter curl of his nose, eyebrows twitching downward. “Like it?” Frank repeats.

Downturn of her mouth. Lightness leaving her eyes, dark blue hedging in from the rims of her irises. “It’s your life,” Karen says, like that means anything.

That’s the shit that snags, leaves Frank standing at the edge of something silent and immense, stretched out under him; a swooping sensation in his gut as if looking down from a great height. Like if he took a single step forward he’d be gone; swallowed up by the shit Karen got right, and everything she missed because Frank didn’t let her see.

Maria’s absence rips a hole through all of it; dividing Frank’s time into two pieces: _before_ and _after_. If it’s supposed to be his life story, then she’d be it.

But — that’s good. Maria doesn’t need to be part of this. ( _Maria will always be part of this._ ) Frank’s got enough paperwork filled in with his name to wallpaper The Safehouse, baseboards to fucking rafters. But Maria shouldn’t be confined to a page. It’d be too much like Karen writing her obituary, folding Maria into the background noise of Frank’s life in the process; a newspaper tragedy _._ Or worse: a neatly designated _contributing factor_ in his own shit.

(The thought is ungenerous, painted tall across the inner wall of his skull even as Frank knows that ain’t fair; that Karen is a better writer — a better _person_ , unless he’s got something dead wrong — than that.)

So the write-up on him is incomplete, missing huge chunks of the shit that should be essential. Seems appropriate.

It is good work. ’Side from that, it serves a fucking purpose that dragging Maria’s name out in public never would.

“It’s a story, Karen,” he insists. His index finger traces the rim of his mug, ceramic glazed smooth except for a tiny nick on the handle that presses into the joint of his middle finger. “Well-written, yeah,” Frank continues, shrugging. “But — it ain’t about me _liking_ it.”

Maybe it’s a bullshit answer, given the way Karen’s face twists with suspicion when he delivers it.

She sighs and flips over the menu in front of her. One hand wraps around the back of her neck, forearm diving under the curtain of her hair. She leans into it. Her fingertips drum on the tacky laminate of the menu, blue-gray and shining. A stilted silence.

Another deep exhale and she drops her hand from her nape to cross her forearms over each other on the table. “What the hell am I doing here, Frank?” The demand is whispered, but severe. All the sound and fury confined in her eyes. She shrugs once and leans back, an abrupt, irritated motion. Makes Frank’s own shoulders tense in turn. “Seriously, if you’re just here to tell me the piece was _well-written_ but that it doesn’t matter then —”

Jesus Christ. This woman.

“Sunday,” Frank says, locking eyes with her. “That was tough for you, in there, right?”

First, Karen’s jaw opens and closes, soundless. Then, all the air in her chest leaves her in a rush; an exasperated chuckle, shot through with disbelief.

She shakes her head. “I. Uhm. No.” A lie. Another breath, her eyes narrowing. “I — what?”

“It’s why you left, the other day, right? With everyone there. It was…” he stalks the word, searches it out and pulls it into the open. “Hard?”

Another breathless scoff. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She nearly rolls her eyes, but seems to catch herself. “I had —”

She’s about to triple down on that particular lie and really, Frank’s not going to bite anymore than he did the first two times she tried to make that shit work. He stops her mid-sentence. “Let’s not do that.”

Karen stares. Looks like she’s about to fight him, eyes all blue fire. (Frank thinks it must’ve been twenty years ago, in high school, that he first learned blue fire burns hotter than red. Earth sciences. He’s surprised he remembers.) Every line of her is still, seized up with whatever feverish defense she’s got stewing, her hands poised against her forearms like something carved from ivory.

Frank’s own hands stutter against his mug, gathering heat as he watches her.  

In the space of another breath, the fight in her transmutes. Frank watches her nostrils flare as she breathes out, smattering of freckles across her cheekbones, the gradation in skin so subtle Frank blinks. He hadn’t noticed the freckles, before.

He’s wrinkling his nose again when Karen meets his eyes — when did he look away? — and concedes, quiet, “Okay.”

He nods. “Okay.” His voice is even lower than hers; an echo. 

Before Frank can steer the conversation back, they’re interrupted by the return of their waitress. Frank diverts his attention from the look in Karen’s eyes to watch her top off his cup.

“Three over easy, bacon, sourdough toast?” She asks as she pours fresh coffee into Karen’s mug, lifting a thin eyebrow. Self-assured. Old hand.

Frank grins back, polite to a fault and honestly a bit impressed. “That’d be it,” he says, offering the waitress a salute with his mug before taking a pull. The coffee is bitter, dark and rich, and just shy of too hot to drink. He’s going to miss it on tour.

The exchange shocks a smirk out of Karen — a lift of her eyebrows, pale and arched, looking pointedly between Frank and the waitress when the woman’s not looking. A _tch_ sound escapes the back of Frank’s throat.  

“Over hard for you, hon?” The waitress asks, turning on Karen — whose face heats, bright pink pushing over those high cheekbones like a kid caught in the cookie jar. She seems nonplussed, either unbothered by or oblivious to the sudden switch in Karen’s demeanor: conspiratorial and a touch playful. “Orange juice too?” 

Frank suppresses another snort.

“Uhm. Yeah,” Karen breathes, tilting her head up to look at their server, hair falling between her and Frank like a curtain. Poking out through gold, Frank sees the red curve of her ear. “Can I, uhm. Get a side of rye with that?”

“Sure thing,” their waitress replies, giving them both another smile before departing with a promise, “Be right out for you.”

He’s just setting down his coffee, swallowing, when Karen finally turns back to him, one hand coming up to tame her hair. Frank’s knuckles push at the rim of his mug — he’s hoping the renewed heat of the freshened cup will steady the shake in both hands. (It’d taken him a solid thirty seconds to get his key in the hole, locking up his apartment. A bad day.) “Okay,” he says, gaze dragging over the table — tired-looking formica, sticky laminate menus, clean silverware — and back up to Karen’s face. Her eyes are dark blue, mouth tight, all hesitation. “Talk.”

Karen lurches forward, forearms pressing into the table, “And say what?” She holds his gaze for a moment that stretches, overextends itself. Then. Splinters and breaks. A mean twist to her lips. “That it was tough for me? That I can’t handle myself? Yeah, it was. And yes, I can. What —”

“Jesus. Stop.” Frank shifts, rears back in his seat. Shakes his head. “That ain’t what I meant.”

“What do you mean, then?” She’s still raring to fight — nostrils flared, stubborn set to her jaw. Angry enough she’s practically shining with it.

For the first time since they’ve met, Frank actually feels himself getting angry, too.

His voice is rough, words coming out fast: “I mean first you lie so you, I don’t… I don’t know. Still got an excuse to stick around, yeah? Then you lie so you’ve got an excuse to leave. I don’t know what you — what do you want?” 

Karen opens her mouth. Doesn’t say anything, just grips her forearms tighter, baring her teeth in something between a snarl and a grimace that disappears quick as it came.

Frank pushes on. “I thought maybe you were fucked up about the other night. After the show.” He looks her over, tracks the accelerating rise and fall of her shoulders in the midst of trying to think what the fuck to say next. How he’s supposed to make her _listen_. “But that… that’s not when you lost your shit.” Her hands wiping blood off his table in the half-light. “Then Logan shows up and you’re done.”

Disparate pieces start to thread together in Frank’s head, a picture of Karen clarifying itself at the edges. But it ain’t whole yet — not by a long shot. He breathes out, slow, unlocking the muscles in his jaw. “No one’s saying you can’t handle shit, Karen. You’re the one who keeps bringing it up.” 

“Kathy —”

Frank scoffs. Karen’s mouth snaps shut — look on her face like she’d like to deck him. Frank wonders if that might help, if Karen should just get it over with. She’s obviously got some shit to work out.

“O’Brien picks fights. S’what she does.” The fingers of Frank’s right hand tap hard against the handle of his mug before lifting it, murmuring low before he takes a drink, “Reminds me of somebody I know.”

Light ricochets off a passing car, cuts across Karen’s face in the already bright diner. Her eyes sweep up and to the side, a curl to her mouth that might be a smile if she weren’t so geared up.

Frank lowers his mug. “You know what?” His voice is more tired than he expects. Headache gathering in his temples. “If you can handle yourself then stay put and _do it_. How many times I gotta say I’m not your enemy ‘fore you believe it?”

Karen stills a little, then, thoughtful fold over the bridge of her nose. Her head dips to one side. “Thought you were only gonna say that once.”

His answering exhale is audible, breath rattling in his chest. “That right.” The left side of Frank’s mouth twists up; he lets his own gaze swing wide of her, scanning the street through the window. “Yeah, well. If I lied, I think you can cut me some slack, reporter.”

Karen huffs, shoulders hunching. It’s goddamn unladylike, poor posture and bullish expression clashing with the delicate lines of her dress. The wiseass smile lingers on Frank’s face a few more seconds before giving way to something softer, eyes dropping to Karen’s hands on the table.

“Here we are,” their waitress — _Jean_ , Frank reads again — says, arriving with their orders. She serves Karen first, who manages a meager smile as the woman sets her eggs and toast in front of her. Frank gives Jean a low thank you when she places his on the table, too.

Neither of them touch their plates, however. Karen hardly moves. Frank looks at her food, then his own, before taking another drink of coffee. Hears the mug slide against the formica surface when he puts it back down.

A beat. “I just wanted you to know you didn’t have to leave.” He hopes she won’t find something in that sentence to rail against.

Karen keeps him waiting. Frank watches one corner of her mouth twitch, then crumple. She’s chewing the inside of her lip. Doesn’t look at him. Her nails tap against the freckles on her forearms, spots of soft gray appearing dark against her skin. Her fidgeting is by the goddamn book — for a second, Frank can’t help but imagine looking at her from the other side of a wide circle, metal folding chair hard against his back, an air-conditioned chill reaching under the sleeves of his hoodie.

Curt would probably try and make her feel comfortable, safe; share some skeleton from his own closet to draw her out. Barnes would crack a joke or walk away, depending on the day. Frank just watches.

Movement.

Her shoulders inch down, her head turns away — hair swinging into her face, obscuring most of Frank’s view. One hand reaches up, knuckle pressing against the bow of her lip, elbow propped on the table. 

Karen sighs. The sound is almost a chuckle, but. Lower. Softer. Another faint shake of her head as she turns back to him. When Frank sees her eyes, they’re almost wet. Frank senses his own movements becoming more compact, everything dialed back in the midst of the raw nerve that is Karen Page.

“God,” she exhales, tucking her chin low. She touches her hair, now, fingers disappearing into the waves of that nursery-rhyme-golden hair as she brushes it back from her face, finally looking Frank in the eye. “You must think I’m an asshole.” There’s a tentative curl to her mouth, as if it can’t decide whether or not it wants to smile.

Frank chuckles in response, even as Karen drops her eyes once more. “Should fit right in.”

That pulls her focus back up — seems like he’s struck something. Karen’s mouth thins into a short, straight line as she sucks her lips around her teeth, nodding slowly. She takes hold of her glass of orange juice, fingertips tapping at the rim. Considers Frank’s words, eyes tightening.

“I’m not… uhm. Great. At friends,” she finally says, careful in a way that makes the admission seem more revelatory than it really is. 

Frank can’t help but snicker, his voice dragged through gravel as he says — gentle despite the laughter — “No shit.”

Karen picks up her fork and rolls her eyes.

“So,” Frank starts, rubbing his palms together before intertwining his fingers, elbows braced on the table, his arms and hands creating an arch over his plate, “how’s it gonna be on tour?”

The crease between Karen’s eyebrows deepens. Minute tilt of her head.

Frank clarifies, coffee momentarily abandoned, “Two weeks in a van. You done that kinda thing before?”

She stills again, fork pressed into her eggs. Frank watches her catch her bottom lip with her teeth. Making him wait her out again. When she finally nods, it’s slow. Cagey as shit. Frank’s attention zeroes in on the roll of her throat, Karen swallowing before speaking.

“Uh, yeah,” her voice is small and preoccupied, eyes moving between her plate and Frank’s without seeming to see anything. “My parents… used to drive us down to North Carolina every summer —” her voice isn’t quite happy or sad; just soft enough that Frank has to concentrate to catch every word, yet too loud to be a whisper. Sentences punctuated by the scrape of knife and fork across her plate — methodically cutting up her food before eating it.

He taps the fingers of his right hand against the back of his left before untangling them, taking up his own fork and tucking into his eggs. He lifts a forkful to his mouth, chews, remembers: a half-hidden laugh bringing her sentence to a sudden stop, her old man’s Pete Seeger tapes.

“You get along?” He asks, frowning at his plate. He reaches for the pepper, shaking it over his eggs. Low sound in his throat. When he sets the shaker aside again, he notes Karen’s eyes tracking his movements. She still hasn’t touched her food, aside from divvying it up into dainty, bite-size pieces.  

It might be funny, another day.

Karen finishes cutting up her food, looking at a loss for what to do next. Gaze sweeping across Frank’s forehead before landing tentatively on his eyes. “Sure.”

Frank nods. “‘M not sure me an’ my old man could hack it, that long a drive. And the band, y’know,” he reaches for his mug, lifts it from the table without breaking eye contact, “it takes a while. Learn what you gotta do to pass the time without crawlin’ up someone’s ass.”

Karen laughs like she’s forgotten not to, leaning her head against one hand. “I think I know what you mean.”

“Yeah?” It’s more an encouraging noise than a word, barely formed around the rim of Frank’s mug as he moves to take a drink, hide his smile in his coffee.

“Yeah, my brother used to — uh.”  All at once Karen clenches up again, a different kind of flush overtaking her.

Frank swallows his coffee. Doesn’t taste it.

When the waitress swoops in — topping off his mug, asking after the food — Frank’s answers are short and polite, wrapped around a renewed tension. He’s not sure if he’s annoyed that the waitress — _Jean_ , fuck, how many times does he have to fucking read it — showed up right then, or grateful.

Grateful on Karen’s behalf, maybe. She’s looking at her plate, glances up once with a polite smile that lands like a bad joke in his stomach.

“You’re not hungry?” Frank asks.

Karen shrugs. The gesture is brittle at the edges, breath rushing out of her. She picks up a section of bacon and pops it into her mouth as if to say, _See? All good._

Frank stares at her a beat longer before looking over her shoulder, line of sight cutting a path to the kids in the front corner booth. The sound of Karen’s fork scraping against the ceramic of her plate scrapes Frank’s ears in turn, the pain in his head briefly pulsing in time with his heart rate as he watches one of the kids eyeing a burger set in the kitchen’s service window.

The waitress — _Jean, Jean,_ Jean, _Jesus Christ_ — breezes past them once again, bouncing between a table Frank hadn’t noticed fill and the counter. He leans over, beckons her attention with a lift of his hand, and she gives him a matronly smile; Karen’s attention feels heavy on his face.

“You wanna send two, uh,” Frank glances surreptitiously at the sticky menu under his plate, “hamburgers over there?” He jerks his chin towards the kids — the one with longer hair leaning his head against the window, now. Eyes closed. Jaw tight.

The vinyl on Karen’s seat squeaks as she twists, following Frank’s nod. Jesus, the woman’s not subtle. The kid’s eyes fly open just as Karen pinpoints their booth. Meets her eyes. Flips her the bird. 

Karen whips back into her seat, facing Frank, cheeks burning behind her hair. She shoves a forkful of egg into her mouth. Frank takes a pull from his coffee, nose scrunching. A quiet _hnh_ emerges from his throat — buried laughter.

Their-waitress-whose-name-tag-says-Jean- _Goddamnit_ looks at the kids too, mouth thinning at the middle finger. That’s when she severs her attention and gives Frank a long look, one pencilled eyebrow — a shade of dull magenta that calls to mind the elderly women in Frank’s neighborhood in Jersey, growing up; the ones whose eyesight was too far gone to realize whatever shit they’d put in their hair to combat the gray had turned it bright goddamn blue — arches.  

Frank stares back. “Cheese, pickles, tomato, you know,” he twirls one finger. “The works.”

Jean sighs, shoulders lifting in a distrustful shrug, “Your money.” She makes a note of it on her pad, clicking her pen forcefully. “You want me to tell ‘em who they’re from?”

He grunts a negative. Shakes his head, once. Both of the waitress’ eyebrows raise then, but she doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t linger.

Karen’s staring, when she walks away. She’s putting too much weight on her fork, tines scraping against her plate where they’re stabbed through the center of an egg yolk. “You—” 

Frank shakes his head again. Raises a large forkful of food and shoves it into his mouth. Before he’s finished chewing, he asks, “So. How should it work, meeting up before we roll out? Rachel keeps the van at her place in the Bronx, gonna bring it over to The Safehouse to load up ‘round oh-eight hundred. Then meet at Red’s.”

Karen pulls a curtain of hair back from her face, tucking it behind one ear. “I could meet at, uh. Matt’s place too. If you give me the address.”

Frank nods, lifting a triangular slice of toast in one hand, his other still gripping the fork. Gets almost half the slice in one bite, chases it with a forkful of egg and bacon that isn’t much smaller. Karen’s pupils move up and down, tracking his progress, poking at her own food aimlessly. He almost snorts — she seems to have lost her appetite, but he’s fucking starving. Got caught up enough calling her earlier that he forgot breakfast (a protein shake, probably abandoned on his counter, if Frank remembered to take it down from the cupboard in the first place).

“Lieberman’ll get it to you. It’s in the Kitchen.” He speaks around a cheekful of egg, bacon and sourdough, reaching for his coffee to wash it down. Karen seems to smile despite herself, eyebrows knit together like she’s not sure if she wants to chastise him for it.

But picking at your food ain’t great manners either. She keeps whatever shit she might give him to herself. 

“Alright,” Karen says, breaking off a piece of bacon roughly the size of a quarter and popping it in her mouth. She chews it like a bite of something exotic, like she’s trying to parse the strange new flavor.

Frank does snort, then. Most of his own food is gone, the pang in his stomach retracting its claws. “You done?”

Karen tilts her head, glancing between her food and his. “I — yeah. Sorry, guess I wasn’t that hungry.” Self-effacing smile. Good natured. Polite.

Frank shrugs, rubs his palms together. Takes a final deep gulp of coffee, finishing off the mug. “Okay.” He slides out from the booth.

“Are… we going?” She’s blinking up at him, lips parted.

“That a problem?” Frank looks to the kitchen, sees a cheeseburger piled high with toppings, complete with a side of fries get set in the service window. It’s quickly followed by a second plate — same thing. Looks back down at her.

“… No.”

Frank nods, waits for her to pull up out of her seat before he starts walking, trailing her to the front. Karen makes to withdraw her wallet from her purse and Frank stops her with a light touch on her elbow, ignoring her sudden stillness against his palm. “I got it.”

He pulls his own wallet from his back pocket, taking out enough cash to pay for both of their orders, the kids’ food, and then some, laying it on the counter with a faint smack. “Delicious,” he aims the word at another, younger waitress stood behind the counter — notices for the first time that the lunch rush is coming in, the din of customers considerably louder than when they’d first arrived. The waitress startles a little at his presence, a soft, “Sure. Have a nice day!” following him and Karen out the door.

He doesn’t look at the kids in the booth.

Karen’s attention is insistent on his profile. They barely make it ten feet from Lou’s before she’s out with it: “What was that about?”

“Hm?”

“Buying those kids lunch.”

Frank’s eyes skid to the side, taking in Karen’s face before he reaches into the front pocket of his jacket, pulling out his pack and extracting a single cigarette as he starts talking. “They were hungry. Couldn’t afford it.”

He fits the menthol between his lips, takes a Bic from another pocket, slowing a bit to light it. Doesn’t manage it until the third try, the lighter clicking uselessly with the first couple attempts. 

The tap of Karen’s heels slows, too. Frank’s hand is cupped around the cigarette and lighter as it ignites. The gesture is reflexive — there’s no wind to shield the flame from, sensation of fire near his palm barely registering in the nondescript, pervasive August heat.

Cars rush by. Snatches of music and pedestrian’s conversations hanging on the edge of his awareness, filling in the blank spaces in his ears. Frank can feel Karen’s unsatisfied curiosity like a breeze on his neck. But he’s not interested in answering the questions she’s got right now, his headache gathered like a solid mass between his eyes and starting to bleed at the edges, filtering throughout his skull. A barely audible, exasperated exhale — of all days to forget his sunglasses.

“Then… I guess you kinda had to, huh.” Karen’s voice is… fond. He’s not sure she means it to be. But it cuts Frank’s line of thought off at the knees. 

He pauses, glancing at her before turning to rake his gaze over the street, evaluating lunch hour traffic. “I guess.” He inhales deep from his cigarette, the smoke a familiar shape in his chest. It does nothing to curb his headache. “So you uh, good to pack light?”

There’s a pause, Karen switching gears. “Uhm. Yeah?” 

“Good. The van can haul a lotta shit, but. Try to stick to basics, yeah?”

Karen scoffs. “I wasn’t really approaching tour as an opportunity to showcase my wardrobe.”

Frank smiles around his cigarette, glancing down and to the side — Karen’s wearing sandals today, made of what looks to be leather; light blue straps criss-crossing over the arches of her feet, exposing her purple toenail polish to the sunshine. There’s a hint of glitter, there. The shoe’s heel is modest, but just high enough to click sharply against the concrete as she walks.

He looks up again and immediately meets her eyes. She’d been watching him, then. “Fair enough.”

They arrive at an intersection. A right turn leads to Karen’s work, Frank knows. Left, to Frank’s apartment. He accepts with a resigned certainty that the pain in his head will get worse before it gets better.

“I’m uh,” he starts, whetting his lips, flicking cigarette ash to the sidewalk, “going that way.”

“Oh. Okay.” Karen wraps both hands around her purse strap, hip cocked slightly.

Frank nods more hesitantly than he knows what to do with. “Okay.” 

He’s mid-turn when Karen’s voice catches him. “Hey.”

He looks back, expectant. A little on edge. _Christ_ , his head hurts.

“Thanks,” Karen finishes, eyes on Frank’s face like she’s not letting herself look away.

 _Huh_. Frank’s not sure how to respond to that. _You’re welcome_ feels stupid, wrong. Silence would be a prick move. After a tenuous cluster of seconds, he nods again, eyes dropping from Karen’s face — earnest as he’s ever seen it — to the sidewalk, before swinging back up again and landing on her right shoulder. The fingers of his right hand tap at his cigarette’s filter while his left clenches and unclenches against his thigh.

“Take care,” Frank offers, finally, before turning. Falling into a steady march towards home.

 

* * *

 

 _You have one (1) new voicemail!_  

_Hi Karen… it’s Mom. We got your email, it’s so exciting to hear you’ll be travelling for work. We’re so proud of you… Your father doesn’t want me to ask, but, if you’re going to be up north, would you mind checking up on the house for us? Give us a call soon, okay? We love you. We miss you, honey. Congratulations again!_

 

* * *

 

Karen is late. She missed her first two — admittedly early — alarms because she’d been dead to the world, initially unable to settle down and go to sleep. The city had been too loud: drunk people shouting in the street; her upstairs neighbor arguing with her boyfriend until he’d stormed out, slamming the door behind him, subsequently attempting to drown out her crying with bass-heavy pop music. Karen’s mom’s voicemail playing on a loop in her head, set to Beyonce’s “Drunk In Love”.

The house. Her mom wants her to check on the _house_.

When Karen finally closes her eyes — after throwing back half a dose of NyQuil in a desperate attempt to shut her brain off and _go the_ fuck _to sleep_ — she dreams.  

She’s in the family station wagon, one hand wrapped around the passenger seat headrest. Her fingers dig into a crack in the leather that’s been there since she was sixteen, courtesy of Kevin trying to get her attention by hanging on to the seat too tight. Karen cranes her neck to look out the rear window.

Kevin waves goodbye to her from the sagging front porch, his reddish blonde hair standing up every which way. He’s giving her that big, dimpled smile, the gap between his front teeth (their mom had refused to let him get braces, said the gap gave him _character)_ flashes as she waves back.

As she turns away, she notices — out of the corner of her eye, her brain taking a moment to catch up to the incongruence of it — that Kevin is wearing his pajamas. Funny. The clock on her dash reads _12:31_ — a little late in the day for monster truck PJ’s.

She turns, faces forward through her windshield. Preparing to drive away, now. Karen puts her food down on the gas, listens to gravel crack and scrape under the tires. She’s made it to the mailbox at the end of the driveway by the time she hears the gunshot.

Karen wakes up before she can turn around, her third alarm chiming. Summer sunlight beats down through her window. She reaches for her phone: _8:34_.

“SHIT,” she hisses to her empty apartment, hauling herself out of bed. Any hope she’d harbored of arriving early or showering before leaving is abandoned as she tugs on clean shorts one-handed, the other brushing her teeth.

She narrowly manages to get her shit together in time to catch the bus, wheezing against the standing pole in the middle of the aisle, backpack slung from one shoulder and camera bag resting at her feet as it pulls away from her block. Applying a shaky layer of mascara with the compact mirror she digs up from an outer pocket of her backpack is more reflex than anything; something to channel her nerves into. 

Matt doesn’t live far from The Safehouse. His building is made from the same early twentieth century brick, same large glass windows reflecting harsh sunlight, though the building features significantly less graffiti.

Perched at the curb are two boxy vans, both bearing New York plates. One — black, visibly the older of the two — idles noisily. The other is dark green, slightly shorter for its low suspension.

The black van’s back door is a tidy gallery of bumper stickers beginning under the window: a circlet of clasped hands and flowers reading _WHEN YOU PUNCH A NAZI, THE WHOLE WORLD PUNCHES WITH YOU_ ; the anarchist ‘A’ in its circle; below that, _MIGRANTES BIENVENIDXS — ABOLISH BORDERS_ ; a grumpy looking tuxedo cat complete with speech bubble: _WANTED: INFORMATION ON RACIST / FASCIST ACTIVITY IN YOUR AREA (Contact: microchip@riseup.net)_.

The dark green van has a spot on the side door, a perfect square of lighter green, as if a large sticker had recently been peeled off.

Frank and Rachel stand facing The Defenders. There’s a loud thunk as Luke Cage closes the back door of the green van, drowning out whatever words are being exchanged.

Karen can only see the back of Frank and Rachel’s heads as she approaches — Rachel’s vibrant hair gathered into its usual ponytail and Frank’s head so freshly shorn that, in the sunlight, Karen sees more skin and scar tissue than dark stubble. Luke’s attention is intent on the two of them, the rich brown skin of his bald head shining. The effect is heightened by his canary yellow t-shirt.

Jessica Jones and Danny Rand stand beside him. Jessica readjusts her backpack with one hand, looking in the opposite direction, doing nothing to hide the combination of annoyance and boredom on her face. Just as Danny opens his mouth — something sparking in his muddy green eyes — Jessica steps on his foot, and whatever he’d been about to say is usurped by a loud squawk.

Matt is the first to notice Karen’s approach. His auburn hair adopts notes of vivid red under the sun, the silver frames of his glasses reflective enough to toss light into Karen’s eyes as he inclines his head toward her. He’s sat on the front steps of his building, Claire perched beside him, leaning into his shoulder. Claire’s quick to follow his gesture. She offers Karen a wave.

Karen picks up the pace, jogging to close the distance. “Hey,” she breathes, her cheeks burning — having already begun to flush by the time she’d turned the last lock in her apartment door, thin sheen of sweat a product of her desperate bid to catch the bus. “Sorry I’m late,” she continues, coming to a stop between Rachel, standing, and Matt, still folded on his stoop next to Claire. She’s fighting to catch her breath, last night’s anxiety beginning to mutate and change shape now that she’s here.

Five sets of eyes turn on her, and Karen’s attention instinctively finds the safest place it can, falling on Frank. His gaze is measured, astute. Nowhere near the somewhat wild and unguarded look he’d shot her the last time she’d seen him, one set of fingers fidgeting with the filter of his cigarette in the long silence before settling on _take care_ and leaving; walking in the opposite direction of Karen’s work. This morning he’s focused, not exactly at ease but un-harried.

“The stupid bus was late,” Karen lies.

Luke — who is facing her head-on, unlike Frank in her periphery — draws Karen’s attention with a kind smile. The expression is so open, goatee framing the wide spread of his mouth. “You made it,” he says, “that’s all that matters.”

Karen nods, tucking a lock of hair behind one ear — already fallen loose from the messy braid she’d managed to work her hair into on the bus. “Yeah…” she trails. Desperate to buck off the attention, she casts her focus out and seizes on something odd. She pivots in Matt’s direction. “No Foggy?”

She’s aware Foggy’s been upset with Matt, but still… she’d expected him to be here for the send-off.

It’s immediately obvious that she shouldn’t have asked. Matt’s face goes pale — or, well, paler than his typical Irish coloring — and his mouth thins into a straight line. Danny and Jessica both look away. Claire’s attention turns back onto Matt. She has one hand cradling his head, and Karen watches her thumb work in a slow circle just below Matt’s ear. Karen’s throat constricts; her stomach curls, cowering against her spine.

“No,” Matt answers, his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. For once, Karen’s glad for his glasses — she doesn’t think she could stand the full brunt of his expression. His voice is thick as he manages the lie: “Couldn’t get off work.”

The hurt is fresh, raw, even if Matt’s doing everything he can to hide it. And for a moment, the rage Karen had felt in Josie’s comes flooding back into her bones. Couldn’t Foggy see that he was being a dick? That all his supposedly well meaning judgement had done was make his best friend miserable?

(And, deeper, in the dark hole in her chest where she’s hidden the memory of her nightmare, a younger and _angrier_ voice demands: _Doesn’t Foggy know that anything can happen? That nothing is guaranteed? That he should hold onto the people he loves and never let go?)_

“Oh,” is all Karen manages in reply.

Another sharp pivot from Jessica. The shorter woman glances — glares, really — between Karen and Matt, before turning on Frank and Rachel. “Well now that all the kids are here for the school bus, you wanna get this shit on the road?”

Karen doesn’t miss the grateful smile Matt throws in Jessica’s direction. Her stomach knots tighter with guilt.

“Sounds good,” Luke replies, genial. He steps behind Danny to catch Jessica’s hip in one large hand and places a brief, tender kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll drive first!” Danny cries brightly, the moment of discomfort apparently forgotten — if he noticed in the first place. “I have a great mix.” He abandons them then, sprinting towards the driver’s side door of The Defenders’ van.

“Great,” Jessica sighs, shifting away from Luke’s touch. She looks to Matt, who’s still on the stoop, leaning into Claire’s orbit like he’s not quite ready to leave. “Murdock, you’re on shotgun, then.”

“Thanks, Jess.” He’s chuckling, a crack of bitterness dividing the sound. Claire’s mouth twitches up.

The intimacy of it — not only between Matt and Claire, but all of The Defenders — makes the fissure between Karen and everyone else on this tour all the more apparent. She doesn’t exactly belong anywhere; an observer rather than participant. It’s a position she used to take comfort in. “Uh,” Karen breathes. “Should I…?”

“We’ll take you,” Frank says, answering the question before she can finish asking.

She exhales. Her shoulders inch down as something in her middle unfurls, loosening muscle and anxiety-coagulated blood. Returns her gaze to Frank’s. Earthy brown eyes meet her own. He remains all business, brusque to a fault. Still, it makes her feet settle on the concrete. This is familiar; this is _normal_. Just her and Frank, negotiating the boundaries of her work and his.

(Yet. Not entirely so; their last face-to-face conversation ringing like a bell in her memory. This is something new — the boundaries beginning to shift, unnoticed until they’re pressed up against. Not their work, but their _lives_ ; the lines between the two, blurring.

She shrugs off the thought, something tickling the back of her throat.)

Karen swallows, throat tight, before saying softly, “Thanks.”

Frank grunts in reply, nodding at her before beginning to walk toward the van. Karen follows him. He keeps his eyes low.

Rachel breezes past them a second later, walking at twice their speed — the quick glimpse Karen gets of her face shows a determination in her gray eyes equal to Frank’s. Yet, in the brief moment, Rachel manages a wry quirk of her mouth, punctuated by a sardonic salute in their direction.

Karen finds herself smiling after Rachel as she disappears around the side of the van, the old Ford creaking and swaying as she climbs into the driver’s seat.

Frank pulls them both to a stop at the back of the van, wrenching open the rear door that’s coated in stickers — sunlight glints off the license plate, which reads _BTTLVAN_. Karen blinks into the glare, momentarily blinded.  

The open door reveals a tight and precisely packed space. There’s a shelf of sorts, built into the back, made of unfinished plywood. It’s in an L-shape, leaving room for Micro’s kick drum to be safely wedged between the shelf, the wall of the van, and the closed back door. It’s lashed to the wall with hot pink nylon for good measure. On a lower level of the shelf rests the remainder of Leatherneck’s instruments and gear, safely out of view from the van’s rear windows. On the top are a variety of boxes and bags. The boxes Karen recognizes from the merch party, Kathy’s jagged scrawl indexing their contents on the sides. Beside those are two worn looking rucksacks: one in desert camo, the other faded black — Rachel and Frank, Karen presumes. Another two rest underneath them, one a black and purple hiking pack and the other a teal duffel printed with lemons. Karen assigns these to Kathy and Micro, respectively.

“Karen!” Micro exclaims when the door opens. They’re twisted around the middle bench in the van to shoot Karen a massive, welcoming smile. Their hair is loose, curling down one side of their head, the ends freshly dyed an array of greens and blues. They wear large, circular Olsen-twin glasses that lend them an almost insectile appearance. “Hell yeah!”

Kathy appears then, rising like a vampire from a coffin from the third — and final — row of seating in the van. She’s got her short hair in two tight braids and has a sleep mask, of all things, around her neck. “Shit Legs, that fuckin’ sun’s bright,” she says by way of greeting before tugging the mask — red, fuzzy — over her eyes and sinking back down, out of sight.

Karen waves to Micro, who faces forward again, and then slides her luggage — a stained, lime green Patagonia hiking backpack she’s had since she was fifteen, and a camera bag that contains both her Canon and her clunkier, less-loved DSLR (as well as the requisite gear for each) — into the open spot on the shelf.

(Clearly left to accommodate her things, considering how the van appears to have been packed by an advanced level Tetris player. Karen chews the inside of her cheek at the thought.)

It’s then that Frank pauses, expression adjusting as he apparently seizes the chance to take in Karen’s belongings, and her appearance. A comfortable narrowing of his eyes as the small network of crow’s feet that lives at their corners gather and tilt upward, mirroring the shift in his mouth. “Work shoes, huh?” he says, voice warm as summer soil. He nods down at her footwear: black and white low-top Converse.

Karen checks over her bags, making sure they’re secure and buying herself a moment before looking at Frank and raising an eyebrow. “Don’t worry, I’ve got heels right here,” she says, patting the place where her backpack bulges the most.

For a moment Frank stares, his brows folding with the speed and grace of a rockslide. Karen steels herself, keeps her smirk firmly in place. She doesn’t break, a raised eyebrow the only response she’ll offer to Frank’s frozen expression.

Then, quick enough that it makes Karen’s breath catch, pulse jumping at the sound, he laughs; that newly familiar _heh heh_ , dry and crackling. “All-terrain prep,” he replies.

“Yep.”

“Atta girl,” he mutters, dropping his eyes from hers before making a vague gesture with the door, asking if she’s ready to close it.

Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, Karen’s about to nod an affirmative, sparing one glance up the length of the van’s interior. There’s a mass-market paperback on the dash, pages curling just so. The hint of a broken spine.

“Wait,” she says, the word flying from her throat as she propels herself forward, tugging out her camera bag. The zipper whistles as she pulls it, reaching inside and retrieving her Canon from where it’s nested opposite the big Nikon and its lenses. She leaves the Canon’s 50 in its case, tucking an extra roll of film into the pocket of her shorts before zipping the bag shut.

Karen rocks onto her heels, bounces back a step to stand clear of the door. She gives him a nod, quick. “Okay.”

She’s expecting the echo when it comes, low and gruff, “Okay.” Frank mirrors her nod, gaze sweeping down, away from her face as he steps forward and uses his whole body to close the door.

Then he glances up, gives Karen an indecipherable look before crossing in front of her, briefly slotting himself between her and the van. Close enough that Karen can smell the bitterness of his menthols — either the smoke clings to his jacket (likely) or he’s already had a few today (just as likely).

Karen follows him, sparing a glance down the block to where she can see Danny in the driver’s side window of The Defenders’ van, fiddling with his phone while Jessica stares at the ceiling. Another metallic creak calls Karen’s attention back, following the sound to find that Frank’s opened the side door for her. His shoulders are already disappearing behind it, wrenching open the front passenger’s door as well.

Micro’s head pops out from the side, grinning. “You ready?” It’s then that Karen realizes it’s not the absence of their glasses that makes their face seem so different: it’s the thinness of their eyebrows. Micro hasn’t penciled them in yet. It makes their face appear rounder. Younger.

Drawing in a breath, Karen straightens her shoulders and nods. One foot in front of the other. “Yeah,” she breathes back, clearing the handful of steps between them.

Micro sways back inside the van, shuffling over to the far side of the bench so Karen can take the seat behind Frank. An August sun climbs higher in the sky. The van’s air conditioning whines, straining against the mounting heat.

Rachel aims a look back at them over her right shoulder, red hair blazing where it catches the sunlight. She meets Micro’s eyes, gives Karen a cursory glance, then looks at Frank — who’s already reaching for the paperback on the dash — and asks, “We oscar-mike?”

Frank’s answering nod is momentarily framed in the rearview mirror before he adjusts in his seat, moves closer to the passenger window; the tidy edge of his hairline, freshly buzzed; the fan of his eyelashes clear from the elevated angle. Karen watches the bruised highpoint of his cheekbone dip out of sight, closely followed by one large ear.

With Frank gone from the frame, Karen locks eyes with her own reflection for a fraction of a second before looking away, back to Micro. Their grin is _effervescent_ — they stretch up, swatting the side of Rachel’s seat in excitement. “Affirmative,” Micro replies, speaking into the cupped palm of their opposite hand, distorting their voice as if speaking over a CB radio.

Kathy, from her prone position in the back row, whistles loudly. Rachel puts the van in drive. Frank leans forward and turns on the radio.

Static crackles at the edges of the traffic reports and morning news shows that escort them north, out of the boundaries of the city and towards a landscape Karen once left behind.

 

* * *

 

Albany is uncharted territory for Karen. It’s nothing like Manhattan, missing the sense as though every building were leaning into and over her, watching. It reminds her more of Boston — a trip she’d taken with her dad when she was applying to colleges (timed, of course, so they could make it to a Sox game). There’s plenty of concrete, but the streets seem more open. She feels less like a body packed into a mass grave.

She’s ready to take advantage of the table and chairs outside the venue, soak it all in; sketch the bar’s exterior before The Defenders and Leatherneck take to the stage later tonight.

Karen had been more or less shooed off by Kathy and Jessica as they were moving equipment in and out of the vans. Micro was the only one brave enough to volunteer to join Danny on a dinner run, and while Rachel and Luke lug drum kits from point A to point B, Frank is having a conversation with the venue’s sound engineer.

Judging by the expression on Frank’s face, it’s not a pleasant one. Karen decides to keep herself and her camera out of the way.

“Mind if I join you?” Matt Murdock asks, tugging Karen’s attention from watching Frank argue with the sound guy through the bar’s front window. She just catches the engineer look over Frank’s shoulder directly at Matt, and the gist of the conversation falls into place.

The corner of Karen’s mouth twitches. She thinks about Frank at the diner the week before, his gaze flickering between the kids behind her and the waitress planted beside their own booth; perfectly still, one finger half raised against the handle of his coffee mug, mid-tic, as if frozen in amber. Then, a minute jerk of his head. His even tone, asking, _You wanna send two, uh, hamburgers over there?_

“Karen?” Matt again. More tentative, this time, a hairline fracture of nerves splintering his voice. He jerks his head a little — reminds Karen of an anxious horse, tossing their mane — ear turned towards her, as if he’s trying to make sure it’s really her by sound alone. His hands wring around the handle of his cane.

Her face heats. “Oh yeah! Sure.” The answer spills out of her in a breathless rush. She pushes at a lock of hair that’s fallen in her eyes — she’d taken out her braid an hour into the drive. It’d pressed into her skull when she leaned back in her seat, a low ache in her scalp by the time she’d undone it. When she glances up, Matt’s still standing, expression a little skittish. “Uhm. Chair’s to your right.”

To Karen’s surprise, Matt flushes in return. Ducks his head, a nervous twitch of his mouth revealing a few lines which frame his lips, a dimple in his cheek. “Thanks,” he murmurs back.

“Uhm, sure,” Karen replies, looking back down at her notebook open on the table. Soft pencil lines take the shape of Frank and the sound engineer on the page, framed by Karen’s perspective of the venue.

She doesn’t remember starting to draw the two figures, but here they are — stippling at the crown of Frank’s head to fill in his buzzcut, wrinkles in his jeans. Karen swallows and forces her gaze back to Matt.

Who still appears on edge. She listens to the insistent tapping of his foot against the concrete of the sidewalk. He’s doing a good job making the fact that he’s chewing the inside of his cheek as obvious as possible, the way his jaw’s working.

“You okay?” Karen asks.

“I, uh — yeah,” he answers. His brows dip, partially disappearing behind red lenses for a moment. The words are a hair too forceful for Karen to believe them. Just as she leans forward, setting her pencil down, a few crows call to each other at the end of the block. Matt startles at the sound, turning his ear towards it.

Karen’s struck by the knowledge that he’s lying. Not that she knows Matt well by any means, but she’s seen him at ease and this isn’t it. Actually, it’s the fact that she can so readily _tell_ he’s lying that surprises her first.

The second surprise is that she can feel Frank’s own words forming in her mouth — _Let’s not do that._

“Yeah, you look it,” is all she ends up offering by way of reply.

It draws a laugh out of Matt. She can see pink inch up from under his collar, spreading to his neck. “It’s just — quiet.”

Karen blinks, tilting her head. “Is it?”

Matt looks bewildered. “You don’t think so?”

She takes a moment’s pause and listens. She can hear, abstractly, the faraway rumble of cars. It’s relatively early, sun still stubbornly in the sky, fighting the slow crawl to summer’s end. Closer, she can hear a city bus. The bustle of the bands setting up. People chatting outside a coffee shop down the street.

It’s quieter than Manhattan by hundreds of decibels, but. _Quiet_ is not how Karen would describe Albany.

 _Quiet_ is a summer evening on the porch, watching thunderclouds move in after dinner. Not even the crickets sing too loudly, burrowed into their hideaway holes for the coming storm. Her dad, turning to her and Kevin — who sit on the front steps, popsicles in hand — saying, _Sure is a quiet night_ in a voice that’s above a whisper, but only just.

“I guess not,” she says finally. Comes out of the memory, locking it up tight behind her. Karen’s voice is too low, closing in on a whisper itself. She clears her throat. “My, uh, hometown in Vermont had maybe four hundred people in it.”

“Really?” Matt’s reply is breathless, shocked. His red-brown eyebrows climb up his forehead, revealing a riverbed of lines in his brow. His mouth hangs open for a fraction of a second and Karen squirms, just a little, her foreignness suddenly on display. “I — what was it like?”

It’s not the question she’s expecting. There’s no time to brace for impact. Matt’s query slams into her stomach with the force of a deer slug.

Growing up running barefoot in her backyard; grass stains on every dress, to the point where her mom had to eventually implore her grandmother to _please, stop making Karen white dresses. Could you do navy, or green, maybe?_ Kevin, inevitably trashing every pair of khaki shorts he’d been forced into on Sunday mornings, standing in church with dirt in his pockets. Her father teaching them with steady hands and steadier eyes how to hunt, voice patient as river rock. From bottles on the far, far fence post to elk in the fall to —

“Different,” Karen whispers back, swallowing the memories down.

She’s saved from having to elaborate. Jessica Jones hangs out of the bar’s open door. Her hair catches the sunlight, turning to an oil slick — shimmers of blue and purple emerging from the black. “Hey!” she barks, “You plan on playing or are you just going to leave me here to die with Danny?”

Matt laughs and unfolds his cane. Before leaving, he throws Karen an apologetic smile — she responds with a wave of her hand, only to remember he can’t see it as he gets up and follows

Jess inside the bar. “Die with?” he says, chuckling, as he disappears, “You planning a murder-suicide and not inviting me?”

Karen exhales heavily and drops her pencil. Lets her elbows rest on the table. It’s uneven, rough wood in need of re-finishing. She places her face into her open palms.

“Pad Thai?” a familiar — and, Karen realizes, _welcome_ — voice asks.

Lifting her head, Karen’s met by Micro’s toothy smile as they tumble into the newly vacant seat across from her, black plastic takeout container in hand. They brandish two forks in her face. “I know that look. That’s the ‘oh no, all I’ve had to eat for six hours are Rachel’s unsalted almonds’ look.” They wink. “I bought a replacement bag, by the way.”

Karen flushes, chewing her bottom lip. Micro’s comment is so warm, it draws out a smile despite her embarrassment. “Thanks,” she manages, accepting one of the forks. The food smells good — the bright aroma of spices opening up her sinuses already, steaming in front of her.

Micro shrugs, already sliding a forkful of noodles into their mouth. Unlike Frank, however, they finish chewing before continuing, “No worries. She’s weirdly fastidious about her almond supply, so I figured I’d run interference ‘till you learn the ropes.” They shrug again.

Karen raises an eyebrow. “Studying for the SAT?” she asks, twirling noodles around the tines of her fork.

They burst out laughing — deep and genuine enough that it makes their large, rotund frame tremble with the force of it. “You see the people I hang out with? I gotta stay well-read to keep up,” they reply. “Besides, I think Kathy thought she was being funny when she left a GED prep book in the van, but last tour we’d run out of shit to read, so.” Micro shrugs yet again, but it’s exaggerated; a pantomime of the figure Karen’s seen appear in comment threads on her _AltPress_ articles, constructed out of punctuation symbols.

“Really?” she finds herself asking.

“Yeah, she stuck it right in the library —” they’re referring to the milk crate Karen had found under her seat, jammed with all sorts of books ranging from hardbacks with library sale tags to absolutely trashed mass market paperbacks. It bears a strip of cardboard labeled in Sharpie: _Leatherneck’s Little Lending Library_. “Don’t know when, though.” Another pause, for Micro to eat another forkful. “But I did relearn long-division,” they finish, flashing a grin.

Karen snorts at the thought — Kathy secretly stocking their book stash with whatever stupid shit she could find, Micro attacking the texts with aplomb. “Schoolhouse Rock goes on the road?”

Micro giggles, tucks their chin to their neck. The sound reaches the upper register of their vocal range, cracking a little at the edges. “Don’t give her any ideas, please, I’m begging you.”

Karen raises an eyebrow and takes another bite. The Pad Thai is really good; rich, nutty, warm enough to be a pleasant weight in her belly but not so hot as to make her feel sluggish in the August heat. Silence settles over them both as they eat. It’s filled by the echo of soundcheck starting — the local band they’ve met up with for the show, she thinks. Karen listens as she chews. She’d insisted when Danny and Micro left that she wasn’t hungry; she’s glad Micro called her bluff.

“Hey,” Micro says suddenly, leaning forward, almost onto the table. They gesture toward Karen’s open notebook — the sketch of Frank and the sound engineer. “You’re, like, really good at that.”

Her flush comes in fast and strong. She looks away, her arm reflexively reaching to obscure the page. “I’m not —”

“No, for sure, you are,” Micro continues, barreling over her protest. “You ever think about drawing a set instead of shooting it?”

Karen blinks. “I —” Pauses. Mulls it over. Gathers another forkful of noodles to buy herself time. Micro mirrors her, doesn’t speak. Instead, they lean back, giving her space. “I don’t know if I could,” she says, finally.

“Why not?” they ask, raising one eyebrow — they’d filled them in as Rachel had pulled off the exit. Karen watched, amazed at Micro’s ability to keep their hands steady in a moving vehicle. They’ve drawn them on thick tonight, in dark teal.

“Well,” Karen starts, “it’d be too chaotic.” Her sketching isn’t — it’s not like she’s a _studio artist_. She likes to draw, always has — everything from drawing up rudimentary comics with Kevin when they were kids to filling her gen eds with art history courses. But she’s not an _illustrator_ by any means.

There’s a strange pause that she hastily fills. “C’mon, Micro,” she insists, leaning forward and letting her tone switch from careful to teasing. “You’ve seen your own shows, right?”

They chuckle in reply, blue eyes sharp. “Just a thought.”

Karen nods and affords them a forgiving smile of her own. Then they each set to their food; the moment not quite as awkward as Karen expects it to be.

It ends, eventually, when Frank appears. Karen hadn’t even heard him approach, too busy taking a series of notes on a fresh page of her notebook — economical, shorthand bullet points about everything she can pluck from her memory of the day before she forgets. (Kathy’s sleep mask, _Leatherneck’s Little Lending Library_ in bubble letters she assumes to be Micro’s doing, Rachel’s almonds, the name of the restaurant where Micro and Danny picked up dinner.)

Instead, it’s his voice — a file on metal — that draws Karen’s attention to Frank’s presence. “Hey,” he rasps, hands buried in the pockets of his field jacket. “You plannin’ on workin’ tonight or you busy?”

For an awful moment, shame washes over Karen’s shoulders in a hot wave. Unaware that Frank is speaking to _Micro_ , she begins to flush furiously, snapping her notebook shut.

But Micro _laughs_ , the sound loud enough to fill the street. They set their fork into the now all-but-empty takeout dish. “Sir,” they intone, “didn’t mean to go AWOL, sir.” They rise, shooting Frank a poor attempt at a salute.

“Asshole,” Frank mutters back, a chuckle buried in the word. Karen watches him roll his eyes, rich irises flashing amber in the late afternoon sun.

“If you’ll excuse me, Karen,” Micro says, setting their palms down on the table before pushing up out of their seat, “I am being accused of desertion.” They wink at her before leaving.

Frank’s eyes pass over Karen as he pivots to return to the bar. “Ma’am,” he offers with a small nod, voice altogether too serious to be intended as anything but ironic. Karen just barely catches the amused fold at the corner of his eyes.

Then they’re both gone, leaving Karen alone on the sidewalk.

After a long moment she huffs a laugh, resting one burning cheek in the cradle of her hand.

 

* * *

 

At the end of the night, Karen busies herself with helping The Defenders load gear into their van from the hallway, where they’d been instructed to stash it between sets. It’s all she can do to keep herself from lingering on what happened the last time she’d hung around after a Leatherneck show. 

Tonight’s crowd had been nothing compared to the swell of violence Karen was accustomed to at The Safehouse. Not to say they were _tame_ by any means — she’s got a handful of fresh bruises on her legs and shoulders, as well as new stains on her Converse to show for it — but these concertgoers were, on the whole, decidedly older. Less… _vibrant_ , she might say, only the word lands wrong in her thoughts. Like a puzzle piece that you’re absolutely certain will fit, until it doesn’t.

She’s distracted enough — chewing on the thought, trying to flush out the right word — that she drifts into an auto-piloted silence, sitting on the edge of the stage where she’s supposed to be coiling an aux cable for Danny. Karen doesn’t remember taking out her notebook and pen, but she’s got the plastic cap between her teeth when a pair of familiar, worn boots step into her line of sight.

“You ‘bout done?” Frank asks. His voice is cragged, shot through with the necessary wear and tear of the performance. He’s sporting new marks of his own, earned when he’d head-butted an overenthusiastic crowd surfer who’d made it onstage — when the guy had tried to belt the chorus alongside Frank (a privilege, Karen is beginning to learn, Frank bestows sparingly), Frank had placed his forehead in the way.

A relatively small but rapidly darkening bruise blossoms across the right side of his forehead, encircling a laceration that’s barely a centimeter long — roughly the length of a tooth, Karen figures. Another bruise curves beneath his right eye, a stripe of purple so deep it looks nearly dark brown. The color is disconcertingly complementary to the burnished bronze of Frank’s irises.

Karen boxes that observation away and blinks up at him, noting that between then and now he must have paid a trip to the bathroom, rinsed the crowd surfer’s blood from his forehead.

“We’re about to head out,” Frank continues. He looks from her notebook to her eyes, a lightness washing into his own, enhancing the almost boyish curl of his mouth as he adds, “‘Less you wanna crash in the parking lot with The Defenders tonight…”

Karen shakes her head immediately. “No, no, no,” she rushes, only to realize a beat later — when her eyes find his and Frank’s grin spreads wider — that she bought into Frank’s teasing hook, line, and sinker. Her face and neck heat, but her stomach feels warm, airy, instead of clenched and cold. “I’m, uh,” Karen takes the cable in one hand, tucks her pen into the haphazard bun she’d gathered her hair into. “Let me get this back to Danny and then I’m all set.”

Frank nods, quick and peremptory before stalking away. Somewhere in the shuffle of bodies, merch, and equipment, he’d slipped back into his field jacket. Karen watches him a moment, the rise and fall of his shoulders timed with each step. Karen’s hands work quickly to wind the cable around her forearm.

She finds Danny next to Jessica at the bar. Someone has — thankfully — returned his shirt to him. Jessica appears to be buying a bottle of whiskey from the bartender, who looks dubious until she reaches into the back pocket of her denim shorts and fishes out a wad of bills. Karen pretends not to see Jessica spread them out on the bar.

“Hey,” she says, once the bartender has walked away, counting his money. “Danny.”

He raises his head, his unkempt curls tamped down with sweat, and gives her a slow smile. There’s a familiar pink hue to the whites of his eyes. “Karen!” he cries, throwing his arms around her.

She pitches forward, dragged the handful of steps closer to Danny and Jessica. Her camera bag knocks painfully into her hip. “Oh,” she mumbles, trying fruitlessly not to breathe in the sickly sweet-meets-putrid scent of vape juice. She pushes back. “Hi.”

“Jesus, Danny,” Jessica mutters, wrapping a hand around Karen’s arm to steady her as she breaks free of Danny’s hug. Her grip is strong — Karen shrugs away from it on instinct. Thankfully for her, Jessica doesn’t seem bothered by the reflex. In the low light of the bar, when Karen looks down to meet her eyes, Jessica’s gaze is so dark that, for a moment, Karen can’t differentiate between pupil and iris. “Now,” Jessica says, sighing loudly and unscrewing the top off her newly purchased bottle of Jack. She takes a drink. “You were saying?”

“I, uh,” Karen starts, forcing herself to focus on Danny and Jessica’s faces. She swallows. Lifts the coiled cable in her hand. “Think this is yours?”

“Oh, shit,” Danny says, nodding enthusiastically. “It is. Thanks, Karen,” he continues, leaning around Jessica to take it from her. “We would have been screwed without this. _Thank you_.”

He doesn’t comment on the fact that Karen really should have given it to him a half an hour ago.

And neither does Jessica, busy scoffing at seriousness of Danny’s tone. “I think we woulda lived,” she says, rolling her eyes in Danny’s direction. She turns her attention back on Karen. “Uh, thanks, though.” A pause, for Jessica to take another pull from her bottle. “You got a place to sleep tonight?”

Karen flushes despite herself, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. The tacit offer — though made drunkenly, and though Karen’s going to decline — pries its way into her chest. “Uhm, I do,” she replies, nodding her head once, twice. She reaches up to push her hair away from her face only to remember it’s been tied back. “Thanks, though.”

Jessica shrugs. “Lucky you,” she says, punctuating her words with another swallow of whiskey. “See you in the morning, Page,” Jessica finishes, reaching for Danny’s arm and tugging him towards the exit.

“Bye, Karen!” Danny calls, waving over his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

Micro pulls the van into a motel parking lot on the outskirts of Albany. There’s a truck stop across the street, a diner-gas-station hybrid that glows in the dark, bright enough to be seen from the highway. Karen stares at it, the fluorescence forcing her eyes — heavy with sleep — to stay open. For a half-second, as they approach, Karen’s head dips, eyelids sliding shut as she toes the edge of a dream about lighthouses made of neon.

“Well,” Micro says, downshifting and pulling on the emergency break. They turn to Karen, blinking in the passenger seat.

(She’d been surprised to find the seat open — Rachel and Kathy posted up in the middle row, Kathy’s legs stretched across Rachel’s lap while Rachel held a pen light between her teeth, reading a dog-eared copy of _Breakfast of Champions_. Frank, spread out it the rear bench, his head pillowed on a duffel bag.)

Micro’s grin spreads. They adopt a voice that reminds Karen suspiciously of _Thomas the Tank Engine_ ’s conductor: “This is your final destination, doors will open on the right, please exit in an orderly fashion.”

Karen watches Rachel roll her eyes in the rearview, a smile taking shape around her penlight before she takes it out, the blue-white LED glow blinking out. “Up, Kath,” Rachel says, quiet, pushing at Kathy’s ankles.

The _click-clink_ of Micro unbuckling their seatbelt pulls Karen’s bleary focus back to the front seat. She watches them turn to her, bright-eyed as ever. “C’mon. Let’s go check in.”

Mute, Karen follows Micro out of the van, re-adjusting her bag on her shoulder as she jogs around the front of the vehicle to keep up with their brisk, confident stride. Once they’re out of earshot of the rest, she asks, realizing she hadn’t considered _what_ the sleeping arrangements would be, “A motel?”

A good-natured laugh escapes Micro’s lips as they raise one dark eyebrow. “Well, we’re not exactly five star folks.”

Her cheeks heat. “No,” Karen starts, looking down now — at her dirty low-tops, Micro’s floral print Doc Martens. “I just. I don’t know, I assumed…” she trails off, frustrated and a little embarrassed and _tired_ enough that her tongue feels heavy in her mouth, trying to find the words.

“Oh,” Micro nods, laughing again. “That we’d sleep in the van?”

Karen nods a confirmation, sheepish.

The smile she receives in reply is merciful. “We used to, don’t worry about our punk cred,” they say, letting the smile morph into a teasing smirk once Karen makes eye contact. “But, well, not that Frank’d ever admit it — shit, or Rachel for that matter — but after ten years that shit gets uncomfortable. And I,” Micro raises a hand to their chest, “am too old.”

It’s an easy enough joke that it manages to draw a soft laugh from Karen. They both know that Micro is Leatherneck’s youngest member, at twenty-nine.

She’s treated to another smile as Micro leans in, stage-whispering now, “But we’ll still camp out sometimes. Y’know, like a shitty family vacation. Kathy burns steaks on the camp stove. I try to get them to play Uno.”

A handful of memories tug at Karen’s exhausted mind like needy children, chattering about her own family vacations. About Kevin setting up their father’s tent in the backyard, the weekend before she left for college.

Karen tries to hush them as Micro opens the door to the motel’s main office.

It doesn’t take long for Micro to get a room key from the haggard desk manager. An announcement of the party name — they’re under Rachel’s name, Karen notes — followed by a confirmation that, yes, the night’s balance has already been paid in full, in advance. Karen shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that Leatherneck has a _reservation_ at a motel that looks like it hasn’t been updated since the early nineties, because of course they do. A joke rolls through Karen’s thoughts, shapeless as a tumbleweed, about Marines and preparation.

The rest of the band is already waiting outside their room. The van is parked in the spot just in front of the door, which faces the motel parking lot. Their respective bags are shouldered, Karen and Micro’s sitting on the curb beside them — two colorful blips illuminated in the red-orange glow of the motel’s lights. Kathy’s sleep mask is pulled back, resting on the top of her head as she frowns; Rachel leans against the exterior of the motel, her eyes closed, looking about as tired as Karen feels.

Micro unlocks the door and leads them into the room, marching single file; Kathy nudging impatiently past Micro, followed closely by Frank, Karen, and Rachel in the rear.

Once they’re inside, Karen’s sinuses are assaulted with the artificial scent of grass, as if someone had coated every surface in a thick layer of Febreeze. _Fresh Meadows_ sticks to the back of her throat. She resists the urge to cough.

Frank, stopping just to her left, drops his bag at the foot of the bed nearest the door and wrinkles his nose. The room itself is dark, lit only by what light can reach through the window blinds from the outside, washing Frank with indistinct stripes of shadow and red light.

The door clicks shut. Rachel locks it behind her, before walking between Karen and Frank to the far side of the room, setting her ruck beside Micro’s duffel bag at the foot of the second bed —

Karen’s thoughts stall and stop, the realization coming on slowly, abstracted in the drowsy crawl of her thoughts: there are five of them and two beds.

Panic lodges like a dry pill in her throat, berating her for being a dumbass with no foresight, apparently — for not thinking to ask what the sleeping arrangements on tour were going to be, for not thinking to get a room of her own regardless. (She had the money, originally. _AltPress_ had given her a stipend, but she’d spent most of it on film, auto-shipped to different stops along the tour.)

Leatherneck moves through the cramped motel room with practiced ease, businesslike as ever. Which only serves to make Karen’s mounting anxiety burn hotter in her throat, her stomach. Suddenly isolated in the understanding that she’s supposed to figure out a way to make herself as un-troublesome as possible while sharing two beds with a four-piece band.

She hears a zipper being slid open. Frank’s head bows as he pulls something from his bag and walks into the bathroom, flipping a switch. A fan rattles to life, and dull yellow light filters into the room from the open door. Karen takes a deep breath, looking down — the exact color of the carpet is indeterminable under the murky light from the bathroom.

Rachel, still at the far side of the room — with two beds between them — strips out of her clothes without preamble, and Karen is greeted with pale, muscular shoulders that bear long lines of ink, small enough that Karen can’t make out the words, can barely identify the ink _as_ text. Rachel tugs on a shirt so worn it’s almost entirely comprised of small holes and horizontal tears. She shimmies within the shirt and, after a few seconds, pulls her sports bra off through the collar.

“Um,” Karen starts, holding her backpack in both hands. “How… where, uhm —”

Her unformed question is met with more confusion from Micro. They’ve got a packet of makeup wipes in one hand, sitting on the edge of the bed furthest from the door. Their brows stitch together, looking between the two beds for a beat. It’s the first time Karen’s caught them genuinely fazed by something.

Her stomach twists.

“Usually Frank’ll take one, me n’ Rachel the other,” Micro says, pausing to scrub one wipe over their face. Apparently recovered from their moment of uncertainty, they find Karen’s eyes and smile just as she begins to speak.

“Kathy —”

“Can take care of her own sleeping arrangements,” Kathy interrupts. She’s unchanged — the only member of Leatherneck to not begin breaking themselves down for bed. (The sound of Frank spitting out toothpaste punctuates Kathy’s sentence.)

Instead, Kathy’s tightening the laces of her combat boots, standing up to her full height with her arms at her sides, hands loosely fisted. “I’m going’ for a walk,” she announces to the room, then stomps out, taking the key from where Micro had set it on the radiator.

Karen stares after her, listening to the sound of the lock clicking. “I —”

“Don’t worry about it,” Micro says, now clean-faced and holding a small handful of colorfully stained wipes. “You can bunk with Fr…” Micro trails off as the exhausted muscles of Karen’s face plainly betray her nerves. “Or. With us.” Micro corrects, speaking up a little. “Rachel can sleep through anything.”

“Lieberman’s a thief,” Frank interjects, appearing in the doorway of the bathroom. With the light behind him he’s more shadow than person, Karen blinking as her exhausted eyes adjust, filling in the details of Frank’s silhouette: socked feet, grey sweatpants loosely tied at the waist. Shirtless, so that Karen can see more of the imposing skull etched into his chest than she ever has before, reaching from beneath the dip between his clavicles to just past his belly button. The scant light in the room glints off the diamond at the center of his mother’s ring, hanging from his neck. It reaches down his chest, settling right between the eyes of the skull.

There are other marks, too; one tattoo on his left hip that appears to be two figures embracing, but the light is too low for her to see much else without staring. Aside from that are the scars, which Karen lets her eyes skip over with a dismayed swoop in her gut.

But before she can look away, her eyes catch on the dark expanse of Frank’s right shoulder. For a beat, she thinks he must have another tattoo, though she has no idea how she could have missed it. Then the shape clarifies, and she realizes she’s not looking at skin, but a kind of heavy, black fabric, laid diagonally across Frank’s upper chest, covering his right shoulder and upper bicep entirely.

Frank takes a few steps toward the bed, Karen lingering near the foot of it and watching as he sets to dismantling the shoulder brace; the sharp, tearing sound of unfastened velcro cutting through the center of her thoughts. He sits on the edge of the mattress, facing the bathroom, offering a clear view of his face in the light: he keeps his eyes down as he reaches back to tug at a second strap. Then all at once the brace loosens, and Frank pulls it off with a low sigh. He sets it on the bedside table.

There’s a handful of silent heartbeats before Karen’s tired mind catches up with the conversation. Another beat before she finds her voice. “Wh…what?” she exhales, her eyes passing once more over the brace before training her attention on Frank.

Frank turns his head toward her. There’s a puzzled bent to his features that makes Karen wonder if she missed something he said, a hybrid between exhaustion and anxiety nudging her closer to a kind of overstimulated stupor.  

“Blankets,” Frank clarifies. His eyes — so much darker in the low light — flicker over his shoulder to Micro, then back to Karen. “They wrap themself up like… like a…” There’s a pause, wherein Karen tracks the brief twist of Frank’s mouth as he searches for the word he wants; jaw clicking shut when he can’t find it. The amusement in his face drifts into something darker for a split second, but he recovers quickly. “Like a cannoli.” 

“I like to be cozy, jerk,” Micro counters, a giggle wedging itself into their tone.

Rachel meets Karen’s eyes from the far side of the room. “To each according to their needs, ‘till the blankets come out,” she quips. She pulls a water bottle out from her ruck and takes a long drink.

Micro’s voice is matter-of-fact. “Under fully-automated luxury gay space communism, there will be enough blankets for everyone to become burritos as they please.”

A laugh sputters to life in Karen’s chest, loosening the tension in her shoulders. When she hears herself laugh out loud, she presses her palm to her mouth, the cool metal bands and glass beads of her bracelets brushing her cheek before they slip farther down her wrist.

Micro grins back at her when she looks at them over her hand.

Rachel rolls her eyes in Micro’s direction, pulling another bottle out of her bag as she sets her water down on the bedside table. The new container rattles as it moves, Rachel twisting it open and tipping it into her palm. She screws the lid back on, sets it beside her water and adjusts the pillow on her side of the bed, clearing a narrow space on the queen-sized mattress. “Well, if everything’s settled…” Rachel trails off, crossing one arm behind her head as she lays back on top of the covers, eyes closed. She tosses the pills into her mouth and swallows them dry.

No one else says anything. Karen stares a moment too long.

“Uhm. I’m just gonna —” she lets the sentence hang, unfinished, gesturing with her backpack — still clutched in two hands — towards the bathroom.

She nearly trips, jogging the handful of steps to the bathroom. With the door closed, the light is bright enough to make her squint, her eyes already burning with fatigue. Karen sucks in a breath and rubs at them, trying to adjust; the shapes of the mirror, the shower curtain, her own reflection are still fuzzy at the edges as she takes a proper look around.

When she meets her own gaze in the mirror, everything finally comes into focus. She’s got to stop fleeing into bathrooms in front of Leatherneck.

Too tired to be angry, too embarrassed to let it go, Karen brushes her teeth with more aggression than is strictly necessary. She lets her hair down from its sloppy bun and strips out of her clothes as fast as she can manage, tugging on the tank top and terry cloth shorts she’d brought to sleep in.

By the time she’s finished, Karen opens the door to find Frank asleep — one arm folded over his chest, blankets gathered around his waist. When the light from the bathroom breaks into the room, however, his face tightens; crow’s feet at his eyes deepening, nose wrinkling. He turns his head, presses his cheek into the pillow.

Maybe not asleep, then.

It takes Karen’s thoughts a moment to catch up with the fact that the light’s probably bothering him. She scrambles to turn it off, fingers slipping against the wallpaper — which is practically sticky to the touch, what the _fuck_ — before finding purchase on the switch.

It leaves her path to bed illuminated only by the crimson glow filtering through the blinds. Karen pads carefully towards the second bed, shoes in one hand and backpack in the other.

“Hey,” Micro whispers as she approaches. She catches their eyes — the brightest thing in the room, now — from where she’s crouched to deposit her belongings at the foot of the bed. They smile down at her, tucked into the middle of the mattress with their back against Rachel’s side, blankets pulled up over their shoulders. “Sorry you gotta be the little spoon.”

Chewing her lip, Karen shakes her head — more thankful that she doesn’t have to sleep sandwiched between Micro and Rachel (or right next to Frank) than she can put into words. “It’s okay,” she whispers, walking carefully up the length of the bed.

She tries to determine the best way to make it through the night. Sleep on top of the sheet (knowing full well she’ll never be able to sleep without _some_ sort of blanket) or under it (forsaking the guarantee of minimal physical contact).

Karen crawls under the covers. Heat comes off Micro’s body in waves. She shifts, trying to find the safest position — the one with the least chance of skin-to-skin contact and ends up on her right shoulder, facing inward. It brings her face to face with Micro.

The memory comes of its own will, beating back her weary defenses easily: the first time she’d been allowed to watch Kevin overnight. Her parents were attending a conference somewhere in the midwest. It was their first night alone together, outside of Vermont, since Kevin had been born.

To Karen and Kevin — fifteen and eight, respectively — their home had seemed too large and far too quiet, with just the two of them. The woods looming over the property. Branches scratch, scratch, scratching at the farmhouse’s wide windows. The stars felt like watchers instead of guardians. Even the crickets’ singing sounded alien, reaching through the hushed dark.

So they piled into their parents’ bed, turning the lumpy queen-sized mattress into a fortress of blankets, impenetrable to the world outside. Karen knows if she were to close her eyes right now, Kevin’s face would be waiting for her — the gap between his teeth, his strawberry blonde hair with the cowlick at the front. His green eyes.

(Her grandmother had always said: a redheaded child with green eyes meant trouble. Karen found the opposite to be true.)

“Sure you’re okay?” Micro asks, half-whispering into their pillow.

She blinks, the memory releasing its hold with a slowness that makes Karen feel as though her conscious thoughts are swimming upstream. “Yeah,” she breathes back.

It’s a lie. The guilt of it worms into her throat when Micro doesn’t reply.

“I, uhm.” She swallows. “My brother and I used to do this,” Karen admits. The words ache as they push their way out of her throat, leaving her raw, piling onto her exhaustion with a vengeance.

In the dark, Karen can’t exactly parse Micro’s expression; their features begin to swim a little before her eyes. They’re quiet for a moment. “I didn’t know you had a brother.” They sound faraway — either sleepy themself, or due to Karen’s fading consciousness. Probably both.

Karen blinks. Her eyelids feel like lead. She nods, but the gesture is inexact — more a function of Karen burrowing into her pillow than responding to Micro’s words. The pillow case is low thread count, scraping slightly against the skin of her cheek. “Uh, yeah,” she whispers. “I actually, uh…” she yawns, feels the seams of the words loosening on her tongue, “grew up in Vermont, near Marlboro,” she confesses, referring to the university town they’ll be playing tomorrow.

“Huh,” Micro’s reply is muted. Karen’s aware, vaguely, that they must be just as exhausted as her. But she can’t seem to stop the words bubbling out of her throat, too tired to realize just how far down her sleeve her heart is slipping.

“Mhm,” she mutters into her pillow. “Mom wanted,” another yawn, “to know if I could check on…the house,” Karen continues, barely awake, now. A drowsy chuckle threads through her words. She can’t explain why it’s a funny request — why, actually, in the limitless black space packed into Karen’s chest, she’s been angrily regaled by the request since she first listened to the voicemail.

“Yeah, sure, yeah,” Micro mumbles back, “in the morning…”

Karen doesn’t hear the rest. The black space pulls sleep over her like a body bag, leaving her alone with the knowledge that her mother should have known better than to ask her to go home.

 

* * *

 

“Karen.” The voice is hushed. Gentle, even. A mild tenor that nudges into the black void of her sleep. Karen’s face twists, somewhere between waking and sleeping. “Hey.” The voice again.

“We’re gonna go get breakfast,” Micro says. “If you wanna come?”

Her eyes open. Stripes of sunlight beat down into the room. The sound of a sink running, water hitting the bowl in irregular bursts — someone washing their hands. The jerk of a zipper. The rustling of items in a bag. She stares at the ceiling for a moment as the world comes back to her. A yellowish brown stain seeps out from a crack splitting the ceiling directly above her head.

The next thing Karen is conscious of is that every vertebrae in her spine _hurts_. Her neck is one solid knot of tension, bent at a forty-five degree angle. Her lower back a mass of clenched muscles. She sucks in a painful breath as she forces herself to sit up, one hand clamping down on the back of her neck.

When she does, Micro gives her a sympathetic smile from their perch at the end of the bed, where they’re lacing up their boots. Their shirt is a violently bright pink that sends Karen’s vision swimming.

“Shit,” Karen breathes, abandoning her futile attempt to work out the rocks of pain that have embedded themselves under her skin. Instead, she rubs at her eyes with the heels of her palms, trying to scrub out the last vestiges of sleep. “What?”

“Breakfast,” Kathy replies from across the room, jolting Karen awake in earnest. When the hell had she come back? Karen combs her memory for the sound of the door opening and comes up blank. Barely remembers crawling into bed in the first place.

But there Kathy is, fully dressed in denim cut-offs, striped tank top, and combat boots, giving Karen a dubious once over with her dark eyes. “At the place across the street.”

 _Across the…_ Karen’s memory jogs up to meet her. _Right_. Albany. Truck stop. Red lights in the parking lot. She swallows forcefully, giving an emphatic nod in Kathy’s direction. She pushes a hand into her hair; knuckles catching on knots courtesy of a fretful sleep, fingertips pressing into the crown of her head. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll just — shower, and, uhm.”

Kathy replies with a churlish laugh as Rachel emerges from the bathroom carrying a small toiletry bag under one arm, her pajamas bunched in her hand. “All yours,” she says to Karen. 

Giving Rachel a nod, Karen hoists herself out of bed. Her spine protests with every move and all she can think about is getting under hot water, letting the heat do its magic on her tight muscles. She shuffles towards the end of the bed and Micro passes her backpack to her.

It’s then that the sunlight passing through the blinds seems to crack open, brightness flooding the room, and for a moment, still circling full wakefulness, Karen thinks she’s _dreaming_. Then she realizes that it’s Frank, opening the door and entering the room.

He’s fully dressed once more, inked and scarred skin for the most part hidden beneath a faded black hoodie, zipped a few inches shy of the notch between his clavicles. Socked feet returned to their well-kept and worn combat boots. His eyes find Karen’s in the fray of the room, and he bows his head in a quick nod. In the clear, natural light, the new bruising on his forehead and beneath his right eye is a contained nebula of yellow and deep magenta. “Mornin’.” 

Karen swallows, tilting her head to slide her hair out of her face before returning his nod. “Hey.” 

“Reporter’s just gonna shower and get pretty before we chow,” Kathy says to Frank, from where she’s leaning against the window.

Karen flushes in response, dropping her gaze until she hears — surprisingly — Rachel’s voice. A brusque scoff followed by a grumbled, “Fuck off, Kath.” She looks up again, meets Rachel’s steely gaze. The older woman offers her a nearly imperceptible nod.

Her eyes are still the color of flint and steel but there’s a subtle shift in the lines of Rachel’s face. Familiarity. Karen finds herself staring, a sensation in the soles of her feet like something sliding into place.

She spends too long in the shower. The shampoo (unopened — apparently she’s the only one electing to shower today) is strangely gummy, difficult to rinse away. Reminds her of the time she and her mom had to use peanut butter to get gum out of Kevin’s hair, after he fell asleep chewing it on the way home from his first Little League game. The water barely gets hot enough to make a dent in the soreness in Karen’s back and neck.

When she’s out of the shower, she takes a drink from the sink and washes down a single ibuprofen she finds in the bottom of her bag, from God knows how long ago.

She dabs on a thin layer of sheer, flesh-tone eyeshadow and a single application of mascara. The outlet sparks when she tries to use the hair dryer. Karen’s plaiting her hair into a wet braid to keep it out of her face when she walks out of the bathroom.

Leatherneck has packed up the room by the time she’s finished; the sheets stripped from the mattresses, left in a neat pile on the edge of the bed closest to the door. A ten dollar bill sits under the lamp on the bedside table. All of their bags — save Karen’s on her shoulder — have been removed, presumably packed away in the van. She can hear, on the other side of the motel’s impossibly thin walls, the rumble of the van’s engine.

Micro and Frank are the only two left in the room, Frank sitting on the bare mattress with his back to Karen, bent over something she can’t see. Micro, meanwhile, scrawls a note she can’t read, tucking it next to the cash on the nightstand.

They look up at her and grin. “You all set?”

Karen looks back at the pile of sheets. “Uhm. One second.” She drops Micro’s gaze and turns back into the bathroom, gathers up the towels — her still wet body towel, the hand towel on the ring next to the sink — and folds them quickly.

After exiting the bathroom, she walks over to the edge of Frank’s bed and sets them down beside the sheets. When she looks at him, he snaps closed a thick, abused-looking notebook, pulling a rubber band around it to bind it shut.

He meets her eyes, then looks to where she’s just left the towels, giving her an approving nod before standing up.

As the three of them walk out to the van, Karen is — somewhat foolishly, she realizes — surprised to find Kathy behind the wheel, radio blasting. She’s equally surprised to recognize the choleric acoustic: The Mountain Goats, turned up high enough to draw a fuzzy rattle from the aged speakers.

Rachel approaches the same time they do. Frank quirks an eyebrow at her, a wordless question that Rachel answers with a no-nonsense, “We’re good.” She climbs into the passenger seat.

Which leaves Karen, Frank, and Micro to the back of the van. Micro is the first to jump in, taking the back row while Frank walks around to the open rear door, gesturing for Karen’s bag. She obliges, allowing him to slide her green monstrosity into place between his own rucksack and her camera bag.

Karen lingers at the side door, waiting for Frank to climb in. She assumes he’ll get into the back row with Micro. But when he pulls up beside her, he shoots her a strange look, his mouth folding down into what she suddenly recognizes as _confusion_ just before wrapping one hand around the doorframe and sliding into the middle row. Karen stares after him.

“Comin’ or goin’, Legs?” Kathy barks over the music, looking over her shoulder and out the open door behind her.

Karen flushes and climbs in, sitting beside Frank. “Sorry,” she mumbles, and pulls the door shut. “Under caffeinated.”

“A-fuckin’-men,” Kathy replies, nodding once before turning over the engine and pulling out of the parking lot.

Karen sways as the van turns, not having bothered to buckle in for the short ride. She notes that Kathy and Rachel are the only ones who have. As she does, her eyes find the clock on the dashboard: _7:02._

The truck stop is bustling; the diner end packed with a morning rush of wan faces, each stooped over their coffees and plates of eggs, bacon, and pancakes. Dishes clattering, spatulas scraping the grill, the well-practiced chatter of kitchen staff behind the counter. The whole place is done up in metallic blue and white — the vintage feel compounded by a crack of wear in the booth a harried waitress behind the hostess’ stand waves them toward.

This diner isn’t _trying_ to look like a holdover from a different time; it is one.

Karen is third to reach the table behind Kathy and Frank, who sit together on one side of the booth. Karen slides into the corner, directly across from Frank against the window — still feeling the sting of Kathy’s remark in her chest.  For a moment, she allows herself the lie that she’s just sitting down with him at Lou’s, like usual. The illusion evaporates when Micro and Rachel take their seats.

Micro squeezes into the remaining space on the opposite side of the booth, Kathy shuffling in close to Frank before they even sit in order to make room. Rachel sits next to Karen.

Karen stares at the menu in front of her, fingers playing with chips in the laminate, to keep from looking up at Rachel — who’s chosen Karen for the second time today: first defending her against Kathy’s insult (the thin veneer of teasing belied by the shrewdness of Kathy’s gaze), now slipping in beside her without hesitation. The promise of something beyond tolerance buoys Karen’s nerves.

“Morning folks, sorry about the wait,” the waitress from the hostess stand calls as she walks up to their table. She’s already armed with a pot of coffee and an additional clean mug, which she sets in front of Micro as the rest of Leatherneck moves to flip over the mugs already on the table. Karen catches on a beat later, hurriedly turning hers upright as the waitress starts serving the band members one by one. “One of my girls called out, so if you’ll excuse the slapdash service, we can get whatever you like started for ya,” the waitress — _Abbey_ , her name tag reads — continues.

She talks fast, a reedy accent weaved through her syllables. After months of harsh consonants and loping vowels in New York, Karen had forgotten the soft way people speak, the closer they get to the Northeastern mountains.

“We’ve got our specials on the board. I can read ‘em out to you if ya like,” Abbey finishes.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Frank says, once she’s filled his mug. He tilts it towards her in acknowledgement before setting it down.

His low voice brings her practiced speech to a stop. Karen can see her mental hackles lower as she apparently recalculates, her weight rocking back as she takes a considerate pause. She holds the coffee pot to her chest for a moment before reaching for Rachel’s mug.

Her mouth spreads in a red-lipsticked smile. The creases in her face, only faintly visible at first — Karen pegs her to be a little older than Frank — deepen as she smiles, crow’s feet emerging around her eyes. Laugh lines. “Doll,” she starts, handing Rachel’s mug back to her and reaching for Karen’s.

She obliges, biting on her to tongue to keep from laughing at Frank being called _doll_. When she hazards a look across the table, Micro and Kathy appear to be doing just the same, with middling success.

“That’s the first thanks I’ve gotten all morning. You folks want some pie? I got some I can sneak away.” Abbey hands Karen her coffee, her eyes not once leaving Frank’s bruised face.

Micro’s own eyes widen into blue saucers. “ _Pie_ ,” they whisper, fervent.

The building laughter at the table bursts. Frank and the waitress laugh first — his a rumble, Abbey’s a high, charmed sort of thing — quickly followed by dry chuckles from Rachel and Kathy.

Karen finds herself joining in. Micro had actually texted her about pie, after her last lunch with Frank. (Karen wondered, after the fact, if they’d been waiting for Frank to give them the go ahead, confirm that Karen was okay.) Apparently Micro’s favorite tour tradition is sampling every town’s pie offerings. They have an anonymous blog about it.

“Please,” Frank confirms, pushing his mug aside with his knuckles until it rests against the window. “And a green tea, if you can.” 

Abbey nods. Karen stares at Frank’s coffee, untouched. There’s a series of bangs, muffled grunts, the unmistakable crash of a plate shattering from somewhere near the kitchen. It’s quickly followed by a low curse and a series of whistles from the truckers lined up at the counter.

“You got it, hon,” Abbey says. “I’ll have ‘em right out for ya. But first I gotta make sure _Jodi didn’t drop that order!_ ” The last part is shouted over her shoulder. She gives their table a final once-over, landing on Frank as she rolls her eyes. A surprisingly wry smirk spreads across her face. “Kids, right?”

Karen watches her leave, ducking around the counter to chastise a blushing boy of about sixteen. He has green eyes. Karen looks away.

Kathy wolf whistles once the waitress is out of earshot. “Well, hell, Frankie.”

He grunts in reply. Flips Kathy the bird without deigning to look at her. “This yours?” he asks.

Kathy’s shoulders tremble with silent laughter. Karen glances to the side, catches Rachel rolling her eyes before smiling into her coffee.

“Hey,” Micro hisses, shoving into Kathy’s side. “Be nice! I want this pie. Don’t screw it up by being rude.”

Kathy gasps, dramatically slamming her open palm to her chest. “Why, Micro Chip, I’d never!” she cries, giving her best Scarlet O’Hara. “Me, Kathryn O’Brien, _rude_?”

Karen snorts. The sound draws Frank’s gaze. She’s flushing when she meets it.

Frank doesn’t look away. Behind his steepled hands — index finger pushing against a wide, bruised and inked knuckle — his mouth spreads in a gradual smile. The movement brings out lines in his face that run down from the edge of his nose into his cheeks, framing his upturned lips. Then his gaze slides slowly back towards Kathy and Micro beside him as they barrel forward with their increasingly grand antics. Frank’s shift in attention is pronounced enough to suggest that Karen’s supposed to follow.

She does, for a moment, before she finds her eyes snapping back to Frank’s, a homing beacon. He raises his eyebrows; gives her a reduced shrug of his shoulders, as if to say, _these assholes, what can you do but enjoy it?_

The corner of Karen’s mouth twitches. Morning light streams through the window Frank’s pressed up against, illuminating the dark purples and blues of his bruises and the freshly formed red-brown scab over the cut on his forehead, throwing his eyes, amber-hued in the sunlight, into startling contrast. She returns the smile. But when it threatens to take over her face — her cheeks warm, her chest too airy — she traps its spread by pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Here we are,” Abbey announces, closer than Karen anticipates. Their waitress seems to have materialized in no time at all. Karen looks away from Frank, jolted by the sudden sound.

“Tea,” she continues, first lifting the steaming mug off the tray she’s balanced on one hand — an old pro, clearly — and Rachel takes it from her with a quick smile to pass along to Frank. “Brought out honey, too, in case you need it,” Abbey says, setting a small glass jar on the table’s edge. “Aaand here’s that pie y’all ordered.” She flashes them all a wink before distributing plates loaded with thick slices of pie around the table.

Apple and cinnamon fill Karen’s nostrils as Frank says, gravelly, “Thank you.” He reaches past Kathy and Micro to take hold of the jar of honey. Karen watches his hands work as he unscrews the cap and dumps a hefty spoonful in his tea before taking a sip. He tilts the mug toward Abbey in salute. “Delicious.”

“Seriously,” Micro adds, nodding so aggressively Karen notes their topknot beginning to slip from the constraints of its elastic. “You have no idea what this means,” they say, solemn.

Their waitress laughs along with Kathy. “You folks enjoy, alright? I’ll be back around with more coffee soon.”

There’s a blessed silence after she leaves, everyone tucking into their free breakfast with the fervor of Dickensian children. Silverware scrapes against ceramic plates, forks knock against teeth. Micro hums loudly around their first bite.

Conversation returns a few bites in, as Karen watches Frank pause his eating to take another drink of tea. Kathy starts chatting around her food and gulps of coffee and Karen lets the conversation — they’re dividing up driving duties, she thinks — filter out of focus and churn itself over into the truck stop’s din as she finishes her coffee.

Her peace lasts all of a minute before Micro says her name. “Karen mentioned wanting to make a stop, up in Vermont.” They’re smiling, gesturing towards her with their fork.

Just as three pairs of eyes turn towards her, Karen’s limbs lock up. Confusion threads its way through her nervous system, her mind racing, struggling to grasp what the hell Micro means before they clarify, her bewilderment clearly telegraphing itself across her face.

“You needed to go check up on your parents’ place?” Micro expounds, a note of hesitation inching their inflection upward. “You mentioned it was near the venue last night?”

_Oh, fuck._

The memory defrosts. She’d fucking _talked to Micro_ about the _goddamn voicemail_ her mom had left her. Fuck. Shit, fuck — _FUCK_.

Karen’s hands tighten around her silverware; the thin, old metal gives a little under the force of her grip. Her jaw clenches, molars scraping each other hard enough for the low squeak-click to reach her ears (she’d had to wear a mouthguard for months, after; grinding her teeth under the weight of her nightmares). Her heart slams in her chest so hard and fast she fears it’ll bust through her ribs, a bloodied mass of muscle and skin landing on the plate before her.

Everyone is looking at her. Fuck. _Shit_.

In a concentration of will that threatens to break her into a cold sweat, Karen forces herself to swallow. To set her fork and knife down. As soon as she does, she touches her hair as if to push it out of her face, before remembering it’s braided back. She drops her hands into her lap, swallowing again. Dry.

“It’s —” she attempts. But her breath isn’t there and she inhales, long and painful, before shaking her head and continuing. “No, I mean — it’s not that close, and uh. I don’t want to put you guys out."

Rachel turns in her seat, to face her. The movement of her red hair, ponytail catching on one shoulder, is a distraction. Karen focuses on that, doing all she can to keep the lump in her throat where it belongs.

Rachel’s forehead creases, her thin auburn brows sloping in a beat of confusion. “It’s an hour and a half to Marlboro,” she says simply. As calm as if they were talking about the weather. “We’ll be in Vermont before ten.” She shrugs, a quick lift of her well-defined shoulders. “I don’t see a problem with it.” Another shrug, this one more contained, communicated chiefly with a shift of her head and a purse of her lips. The movement is so _Frank_ that Karen almost laughs.

A week ago, at Lou’s, when Frank had said _should fit right in_ , it’d been a joke — a truth framed to make her laugh; to urge her to _relax_.

Now, as Rachel responds to her visibly _losing her shit_ in the middle of breakfast with the same measured frankness as she responds to everything else, relief blossoms in the pit of Karen’s stomach. She wishes — desperately — that she hadn’t said anything to Micro last night. Nothing is going to change the fact that she’s fucking _terrified_ of that house.

But. Leatherneck — dotted with landmines of their own — aren’t going to ask her why she’s staring at her plate or why when she speaks next, her voice is hoarse.

All the same, Karen shakes her head, propping one elbow up on the table between her and Rachel — the illusion of distance. “I can’t ask —”

“Stop that,” Frank says, gruff but — hushed. An attempt to curb the harshness of his voice through volume rather than cadence. Karen looks at him without lifting her head. Her fingertips press in the back of her neck.

“You got shit to do,” he continues once her eyes find his. He shrugs, the movement more pronounced than Rachel’s. Frank punctuates it with a drink of his tea. “We’ll drop ‘em off in Marlboro —” he gestures around the table with one large thumb, “— an’ you n’ me’ll go.” He pauses. A beat of silence before he asks, “You can drive, yeah?”

“Uh, y-yeah,” Karen breathes, blinking and sitting up straight, the question unexpected enough to jolt her out of the mire of her nerves, if only for a moment. “I can drive.” Her reply is quiet and quick as a reflex, as if she’s incapable of _not_ answering Frank’s question. Her thoughts scramble, digesting his words.

“Good,” Frank grunts. He clucks once, drops his eyes to his plate. Pulls his mug closer to him with two fingers and takes his fork in the opposite hand, digging into the remainder of his breakfast. He shovels a large forkful of apple and flaky crust into his mouth; jaw working, brow furrowed, as if to say _now that’s settled, let me enjoy my fucking pie_.

* * *

 

Piled into the van once more — Kathy back behind the wheel, Frank beside Karen in the middle row, scratching away at his notebook — Karen wishes she had one of Rachel’s sleeping pills. Or a Xanax. Or a stiff drink.

The Gordian knot of her stomach twists, weaving around her bones and down through her intestines as she watches the tree line change through the window. Kathy keeps up a stream of angry, acoustic folk ballads. Most are familiar, reaching out from the van’s speakers and cutting close to home; shaving away a little more of the protective layer Karen has wound tight around her heart with each verse.

If she were able to forget that night, this journey might be comforting: reminiscent of driving home after a night out — away in a city filled with noise and color — with friends her age, listening to John Darnielle’s early, lo-fi recordings on a radio more tired than they are. It’s high school; it’s college. Karen doesn’t want to remember any of it.

She’d tugged her laptop from her bag before they departed Albany, determined to tunnel into her work, get the first blog entry posted. Instead, Karen stares at an empty Word doc for a full forty minutes before snapping her laptop shut with enough force to draw Frank’s attention.

He glances at the offending Macbook, then tracks his gaze up to Karen’s face. She taps two fingers to her hot forehead, as if to indicate, _headache_. It’s a lie, but he doesn’t give her grief for it. Only huffs and turns back to the worn notebook clasped in his hands.

 _Writing helps_ , she remembers. Karen clenches her jaw and doesn’t pry, though every bone in her body wants to. She closes her eyes and doesn’t think of her own notebook buried in her bag, or the _Welcome to Vermont_ sign they breeze past.

 

* * *

  

Marlboro is small; a picturesque slice of New England with its town common home to the only four buildings in the municipality: the historic inn, town hall, post office, and the church. Each structure is old, colonial framing and uneven windows. Karen could map it from memory, fit it all on one eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet.

They’re playing the college, the last show the university puts on for its orientation sessions to show its future students just what on-campus life can offer. General admission, free to those with university ID. She’s been to a handful herself, with want for better things to do. The townies don’t complain — Marlboro’s desperate adherence to their _hip factor_ being the only way anything interesting ever comes through town.

Though, Karen’d always skipped the punk shows. Her friends — and Karen, too, in all honesty — were geared more towards singer-songwriters. Until recently, she hadn’t had much of an opinion on live music other than thinking it was a good place to meet an array of holier-than-thou assholes.

“Take the right.” Karen leans forward in her seat to be heard. The directions slip out of their own accord, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world to say.

(It is; it isn’t.)

Kathy’s hard gaze finds hers in the rearview mirror. She raises a dark eyebrow, suspect. The fork in the road looms closer.

Karen’s face goes hot. There’s a challenge in Kathy’s brown eyes, because of course there is; they’re not driving off smartphone directions, but rather the map Karen’s seen Rachel pull out twice now, faded purple highlighter marking Leatherneck’s chosen route.

Fight rises in her chest, Kathy’s doubt the flint to the kindling of Karen’s mounting belligerence. “Unless you want nothing better to do but hang around incoming college freshman, take the right,” Karen insists, biting. Sparks to tinder. She points forward, arm outreached between Kathy behind the wheel and Rachel in the passenger seat. “You’re going to want to head for Brattleboro.”

Kathy effectively ignores her, gaze sliding to Rachel. Deferential. Karen has to choke back a scoff. She _knows_ this place. She shouldn’t have to justify herself. Karen’s teeth grind together.

Frank makes a low sound in the back of his throat. “Easy,” he intones, focus flicking to Karen before moving frontward, ostensibly meeting Kathy’s eyes in the mirror. “Kath.” His voice is decisive, a clipped growl.

“I,” Micro calls from behind Karen, “for one, do not have the emotional fortitude to engage with the youth. Personally.”

Kathy sighs, raising one hand in defeat. “Shit, fine.” She bears right. The van rockets east. Karen sits back and doesn’t let herself turn her head, look over her shoulder at the town they’re leaving behind. (She’ll be back. She tries not to think about it.)

 

* * *

 

Brattleboro bursts onto the horizon. Trees fall away at a sharp bend in the road, replaced by the county seat on the river; New Hampshire looming on the other side. Kathy huffs at the sight of it from the front seat.

They take the exit and roll into the city. For a moment, Karen’s thoughts flash on Matt Murdock — how he’d been unsettled by the ‘quiet’ of Albany. They’re pulling into Brattleboro before 10:30 on a Friday morning; the streets are still, the town’s residents working away in what few office spaces the city hosts, or holed up in its coffee shops and grocery store.

Karen hasn’t been back here since…

She watches the courthouse appear, four blocks away. “Go around the corner,” Karen says in a high, strained voice as she points down the street to their immediate left. Heading off the questioning look Kathy begins to direct her way, Karen swallows, continues, “There’s uh. Parking.”

They turn away from the courthouse. Karen exhales, breath shaking just barely.

Kathy pulls into the municipal parking — _Metered after 5 P.M._ , the sign warns — and takes up two spaces to fit the van into a corner.

Micro giggles as they climb out, turning their round face towards her. “Nice work.” They grin, adjusting the strap of their pack on one shoulder.

Kathy flips them the bird. “I’m in the lines,” she spits.

Frank chuckles and lights his cigarette. One large hand cups the flame of his Bic. “Oh yeah. Both sets of ‘em.” He’s standing close enough to Karen that when he exhales smoke, the fetid combination of tobacco and menthol makes her nostrils flare. She swallows.

Kathy levels a dry look at Frank. “Fuck off,” she retorts, reaching out towards him. Karen watches him hand over the cigarette like a reflex. Kathy takes a drag, makes a face. “Ugh. Aren’t you assholes leaving anyway?” She gestures between Frank and Karen with the menthol, takes another deep inhale before passing it back to him.

He smirks at her another few seconds before sniffing, turning away. “Fair enough,” he replies. He takes another drag, looks at Karen beside him. “You good?” 

_No._

Karen nods and doesn’t speak. Swallows again, this time pushing the lump in her throat down below her diaphragm. It joins the other bundles of nerves hardened in her chest, making her breath come short. “Uh, yeah,” she answers. She tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, acutely aware of Kathy, Micro and Rachel gathered around them.

She meets Micro’s eyes first, but doesn’t allow the contact to linger. Like if she doesn’t focus on any one thing too long, the urge to run away might fade. “There’s, uhm. A coffee shop? Two blocks that way —” she gestures behind herself with one hand, “They’ve got wifi and, uh, good strudel.”

Micro smiles. “Cool,” they say before throwing pointed looks at both Kathy and Rachel. They hook a thumb behind each backpack strap. “Thanks, Karen. We’ll see you?”

Frank and Karen nod in unison. “Yeah.” She fights to keep her voice level. “Before three,” she insists, meeting Micro’s alert blue eyes. She nods again — to herself, this time.

 _In and out_ , she promises herself. _Make sure no one’s —_

She clamps down on the thought.

“Not a scratch,” Kathy intones, tossing Karen the van keys. Karen flinches, surprised, but still manages to catch them midair.

Micro giggles, eyes tracing from the keys in Karen’s palm to Frank at her side. “Can’t drive and he’s not even gay. Fucking weird.”

Kathy bark-laughs. Karen looks from Micro to Frank, the latter’s face drawn into a forceless scowl, as if he’s heard this joke before. “What?”

“Frankie doesn’t drive.” Kathy’s voice is impatient, like this is something Karen’s supposed to know. Micro starts walking.

Frank meets Karen’s eyes and shrugs, speaking around his cigarette. “No license.” His eyes slip away from hers, glancing towards the van.

“See ya, Legs,” Kathy says, before nodding at Frank. “Frankencastle.”

“Witch,” Frank returns without missing a beat. He pulls the cigarette from between his lips, watches Kathy turn away.

Rachel is the last to depart, giving Frank a long, silent look. Karen finds herself studying the pavement, feeling like an interloper. She rolls the keys in her hand until Rachel turns away too, the three of them making their way out of the parking lot. 

“You ready?” Frank asks, voice thick as silt. When Karen looks up, she finds him looking right at her, head tilted to initiate eye contact. There’s something unreadable in his eyes — which are the color of soft earth, intent in their observation. 

She swallows and looks back at the pavement. “Uh. Yeah — yeah.” She shakes her head, a fruitless attempt to clear the storm of thoughts that have rolled in. Karen puts one foot in front of the other, marching herself around the front of the van to climb in behind the wheel.

The vehicle sways as Frank pulls himself into the passenger seat. There’s a beat of silence as they each pull their respective seats back; Frank, Karen assumes, for general comfort — she’s noticed he likes to sort of slump in his seat, whereas Rachel sits ramrod straight. Karen meanwhile finds herself almost bent over the steering wheel, the height difference between herself and Kathy more radical than she’d realized.

After adjusting the seat and steering wheel accordingly, Karen takes a quick survey of the van. The front is as shrewdly organized as the back; cup holders and compartments store water bottles, snacks, first aid supplies. It’s clean, obviously recently wiped down. And she’s pleased to note the automatic transmission, the gearshift alongside the right of the steering wheel; she touches the windshield wiper controls on the opposite side, orienting herself. She exhales.

“Okay,” she whispers, and puts the keys in the ignition, turning the engine over.

(Karen’s glad, now, that she insisted on driving the U-Haul her parents had rented when she moved to New York herself. The memory of her dad telling her how to check her blind spots fresher than she might have expected.)

She pulls them out of the parking lot in silence. It’s cool enough that Karen doesn’t need to blast the A/C, and when Frank cracks open the window, Karen can smell last night’s rain on the air. Frank smokes his cigarette.

Karen flicks on the air circulation, hoping it’ll dissipate the smell. All it does, however, is make the silence more pronounced.

She turns on the radio. Static crackles in the space between them — Kathy had been been playing music off a phone or an iPod, then. Karen leans forward, turns the knob to the only radio signal she remembers. 

Piano, guitar and horns. Springsteen’s familiar timbre reaches out to them through the speakers, and all at once Karen’s a kid riding down this same road, listening to her mom’s worn out cassette:

“ _We gotta get out while we’re young, ‘cause tramps like us_ —”

There’s a click. Static again. Karen looks away from the road. Frank’s fingers — their bruises yellowing under the letters inked into his knuckles — turn the knob in inches, stopping at the smooth liquidity of Terry Gross introducing her guest. 

His profile is unreadable, all sloping lines; his heavy brow, the neutral pout of his mouth. Karen’s fingers ache around the steering wheel — her mother’s voice in her ear, _Ten and two, Karen_ — reflexively twitching with the want for a notebook and pencil.

She clears her throat, suddenly aware of the bend in the road, the city bus slowing to a stop directly ahead of them. Her nails dig into leather. “Not a fan of the Boss?” she asks finally, shattering the oppressive, mute air. Her voice is thin. She allows her gaze to slide back towards him, a quiet attempt to regain familiar ground. Her mouth quirks tentatively upward. “Too on the nose for you?”

Frank just grunts in response. Stamps out the butt of his cigarette in the ashtray stuck into one of the cupholders.

Karen hums. “Okay,” she exhales. Puts her foot to the gas as the bus pulls out of its stop. She takes the next left, knowing well enough that it’ll put them on farm roads, where she can push the speed limit and do everything in her power to ignore the burning sensation that’s reignited in her chest with Frank’s sudden shutdown, mixing dangerously with the tension in her stomach with every mile closer to home.

Eventually Brattleboro falls away into thickets of trees and the rolling hills of southern Vermont farmland. Terry Gross asks her guest about the last days before the fall of Saigon.

 

* * *

 

A mailbox marks the property line, just off the road. It’s painted; a project courtesy of Karen and Kevin Page at ages 10 and 3. Purple and orange handprints on the side, in thick acrylic (the orange print is the smaller of the two, palm barely three inches wide). Their mother’s confident brush strokes at the bottom: _K. & K. Page, 2005_.  

And at the base of the mailbox post — almost entirely obscured by untended grass, now — rests the sign: _PRIVATE PROPERTY. DO NOT ENTER_.

Karen barely spares it a glance before turning onto the long, hidden drive.

Cement gives way to gravel, crunching under the van’s tires as she brings them around and onto the property in earnest. Bushes grow close together, thick and adorned with pink-white flowers she can’t remember the names of, bursting forth from a tangle glossy leaves. Karen used to cut her cheeks on the brambles playing hide and seek. She doesn’t linger on the memory, as the foliage gives way to the first of several open fields — the smallest of the flat expanses on the property, her mother’s raised garden beds long since swallowed by overgrowth. It’s a lake of green, fecund with recent rainfall. The land has survived the Page family’s neglect, even thrived in spite of it. 

Then there’s the shed, perfectly square and painted a dingy blue — a test drive from when her father had tried to convince her mom that they should paint the entire house the same shade; he’d hated it once it was finished. The door is padlocked. There are trees on her left, opposite the shed, and Karen does not want to look up.

Her eyes find the treehouse anyway. Crawling ivy had begun its ascent up the maple’s trunk since she and Kevin had both outgrown it, and now the treehouse itself is consumed almost entirely; delicately veined leaves covering thick, weatherworn planks of pine. Karen exhales sharply when she finds the intrusive plant has hidden where they’d carved their names into the wood, using a pocket knife neither one of them were allowed to have in the first place. The memory is touched by an air of the illicit: brother and sister each taking turns keeping watch as the other methodically scratched the letters in deep as they could manage.

The relief Karen feels at not being able to see them, now, is its own small kind of pain.

A gradual bend in the drive. And then —

The house Karen grew up in rises in the windshield. Its Cape Cod clapboard siding, the aged cedar almost entirely gray; four front-facing windows (two on the first floor, two on the second); the front porch is small and simple, the middle step of the stoop sagging gently. The front door is vivid, painted bright red (for luck, according to her mom) and bordered by a door frame made of noticeably newer wood than the rest of the house. An intricately patterned doorknob glints in the summer sun.

It looks strange, peering out from an aggregation of earth tones — like the rest of the house could break down, surrender itself, ultimately be reclaimed by the land as if it were never a house at all, but that red door would remain.

Karen stops the van but can’t yet bring herself to kill the engine.

In lieu of speaking, Frank leans forward and turns off the radio. They sit and listen to the engine idle for what could be a few minutes or the better part of an hour. If not for the clock on the dash, Karen would think the latter.

Eventually, Frank shifts in his seat and breaks the silence. “Your folks —”

“Moved to Florida eight months ago,” Karen finishes. Frank’s looking at her. The weight of his careful study is familiar, now.

She doesn’t want to talk about it. Karen turns off the engine, pulls the keys into her hand and presses the teeth of them against her palm. It’s a fight to keep from kicking out, or slamming on the horn. Instead, she levels her gaze at Frank in the passenger seat. “You coming or should I have cracked the windows?”

Frank’s eyes hold hers. His irises seem to trap sunlight inside them, baking fine threads of amber into the deep brown. “You want me to?”

She exhales; looks away. “C’mon.” Karen unfastens her seatbelt and climbs out of the van. She doesn’t look back. It takes every ounce of her will to keep her feet going in the same direction.

Behind her, the passenger side door slams shut. Frank’s boots chew up gravel as he falls into step with her.

She pockets the van keys, switching them out for another set that have been in her pocket since they left the truck stop. She thumbs the fob — a fluffy purple thing she’d picked out when she got her own set of house keys at thirteen, its synthetic fur long since matted.

Karen lifts one foot and then the other up the front steps. They creak under her, the wooden planks shifting as Frank follows. She pulls in a breath, tastes something familiar yet indescribable in the air, and ignores her body’s response; the way her vision seems to sharpen now that she’s free from the pollution of the city.

She puts her key in the lock just beneath the knob. Then the deadbolt. The red door creaks as it opens.

There’s the oriental rug in the foyer, from her parents’ first apartment — worn so threadbare by the near-constant stampede of children’s feet that the design is practically illegible. The empty hooks on the wall by the door have been labelled in curlicue font by Karen herself, as a childhood project: _Mom, Dad, Karen, Kevin._

Karen steps through the open door and hangs her keys under her name.

Once inside, it’s as if she can’t stop her feet. They pull her right, around the bend — the linen closet and closed doors of her parents’ bedroom on the left — and into the living room.

The rug gives under her; it’s still plush, still _new_ , having seen just over a year of use before the Page family fled this house, this _room_ — Karen to New York, her parents even further south. The rug is beige. Karen’s dirty Converse look like an offense on top of it.

She’s vaguely aware of Frank following her into the house and closing the door behind him. The thud when he does so sounds far away — much further than the handful of steps Karen’s walked. Her voice barely sounds like her own when she says, “There’s water in the kitchen.” Her hand gestures to the doorway on the other side of the living room, through the dining room and past the stairs into the kitchen at the back of the house. She’s unaware of the motion. “Feel free to… whatever.”

Karen is staring at empty bookshelves. The books had gone with her parents, seasonal birds flown south from a house made cold. There are places on the walls where the paint — a muted eggshell color — is lighter than the rest, once home to framed family photos and childhood art projects.

She doesn’t hear Frank walk past, doesn’t track where he goes inside the house. Instead her attention seizes on the couch, a worn old sectional. She notes a stain on the grey suede from when she’d spilled grape juice on the end cushion as a child. A spot of glitter stuck to the back of it — courtesy of some project her mother had them do gone awry — flashes in the sunlight that streams in through the long bank of windows behind it. There’s enough space to hide there, behind the couch and under the windows. That had been Kevin’s spot.

Absently, _stupidly_ , Karen finds herself crouching low. She brings herself down to floor level, seeking the line of Kevin’s small shoulders, the smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks. Thinks to herself that it’s so obvious: Kevin’s just hiding. He’s slipped behind the couch like he used to when their parents were having grown up conversations, long after the children were supposed to be in bed. Kevin’s _right there,_ between the hard back of the couch and the stretch of wall just beneath the windows. He’ll be so proud of himself, to have fooled them all for so long.

Karen’s bare knees press into the rug. Static electricity builds against her hands and knees as she crawls along the carpet, leaning low, lower, lowest.

Instead of Kevin’s green eyes, when she does peer under the couch, she sees the very edge of the bloodstain, reaching just past the boundaries of the new carpet.

 

* * *

 

Frank has his head ducked under the tap of the Page’s kitchen sink when he hears the scream. Though it’s not quite that — not the sound the average imagination might provide when given the word _scream_ : some Hitchcock blonde dropping her jaw to let out a perfect, tearing screech, all white teeth and shining eyes; the way women are supposed to scream. Frank’s heard enough of the real thing to know that’s bullshit.

The sound he hears from the other room is strangled and involuntary; something high and wrong, clearly wrenched out of her lungs before she’d gathered sufficient breath for it. It’s bizarre, to recognize Karen’s voice at the heart of that sound. He’s running before he’s even convinced it was real.

It takes a matter of seconds for him to reach the source of the scream, replaced now by wild, desperate sobbing. The dry kind that always makes Frank think of inhaling sand.

Frank sweeps his eyes over the corners of the living room, the entrances and exits. For a moment the sun coming in through the row of windows to his left is blinding — muddy, rectangular shadows linger in his vision when he looks away from them to find Karen sitting on the floor.

She’s in profile to him, near the couch; her legs tucked to her chest, arms wrapped around her knees. Frank slows his pace to a walk when he’s certain there’s no one else in the room. Karen’s eyes, he notices as he gets closer, are wide and unblinking. Red-rimmed and brimming with unshed tears. Unfocused. Like she’s forcing them to stay open. He stops about six feet shy of her, hands half-curled into fists at his sides.

“Hey,” he says, low.

When Karen doesn’t respond, Frank allows himself to step closer. His thumb presses into the index knuckle on his right hand, dry skin rubbing hard enough to creak slightly before he forces the tension from both hands, opening his palms. As he moves closer, he crouches, careful to keep an arm’s length between them while getting as close to her eye level as possible.

There is no visible response to his approach. Instead, her eyes are — more or less — trained on the couch in front of her. She’s rocking slightly, a motion subtle enough that Frank couldn’t see it until now. Her knuckles are bone-white, fingers digging into the pale skin of her arms. Frank whets his lips.

“Hey,” he starts again, even quieter. When she still doesn’t respond, he tries her name: “Karen.”

She gasps, loud and wet. Frank watches her pupils constrict and expand, refocusing some even though she’s not quite _here_ , yet. Her head turns, glacially slow, towards him. Her breath is coming faster now and Frank can see her chest pushing back against the limbs she has crushed around her body. Her knees are bright pink, a spot of what might be rug burn on the left. But there are no fresh bruises, no blood, no broken glass. Just Karen, body frozen on her living room floor while her mind’s gone AWOL.

He isn’t usually on this side of things. Frank raises his hands, nearly showing Karen his palms as he combs his memory for the words he’s accustomed to hearing, but not speaking.

“Karen,” he repeats, head swaying ever so slightly to one side as his eyes search her face. “You know who I am?”

Her throat skips, the lines that frame her larynx flashing deeper as she swallows hard and nods. “Y-yeah.” Her voice is barely there.

Frank takes a deep breath. “What’s my name?”

Another difficult swallow, the sharp inhale and exhale. Her eyes not meeting his, but tracing the air around him, as if mapping him out in negative space. “F… Frank.”

He nods, slow. “Good.” Frank pauses, tries to remember what he’s supposed to ask. He’s met with an amalgamation of combat stress training and his own jumbled memories of being _talked down_. “You know where you are?” 

Karen’s mouth — her sharp, stinging mouth that usually betrays every goddamn thing she’s feeling, now set in a straight line, devoid of expression — opens. Then closes. He can hear her teeth click. Her eyes go wider, panic diffusing into lakes of blue before freezing them over. “No,” she whispers. She sounds terrified.

Frank swallows the kind of nerves he hasn’t felt in a long goddamn time. “Fair enough.” His tongue darts over the corner of his top lip again as he settles on his haunches. Tries to keep his voice quiet and clear when he says, “You’re home, Karen.”

Wrong fucking thing to say.

Her breathing goes erratic, head swinging in either direction. “Home?” She’s breathless, her thin blonde brows furrowing. “Where’s —” A stop. Another jerk of her head. “Where’s Kevin?” 

Frank feels his own brow pinch in confusion. He’d seen the hooks, on the way in — the names. _Karen_ , obviously, and _Kevin_. He’d been curious, but hadn’t asked.

Suddenly, bizarrely, it feels like this scene has played out before. Like he already knows the answer to the question. A name right beside Karen’s. _Mom_. _Dad_. Who else would it be?

She mentioned a brother. Only once.

The notion materializes in his gut; what might be a sinking sensation if it weren’t suspended; dark and solid and refusing to drop until he knows for sure. 

He whispers through a tight jaw, “Who’s Kevin, Karen?” A foolish impulse ghosts up Frank’s spine, into his hands: that he’s got to find out for sure who he is so he can _find him_ , bring Karen to him —

Her lips part — so pale, she’s so pale — and start, “He —” The words stop. Her mouth hangs in silence. Her eyes shift all over again, refocusing. They stay wide open as her mouth twists, releases a jagged sob. “Oh, God,” her voice cracks. One hand reaches up to cover her mouth.

 

* * *

 

 _Who’s Kevin, Karen?_  

It rings in her head, again and again and again: _Kevin, Kevin, Kevin._

Kevin, her baby brother. He had a gap between his front teeth and freckles sprayed across his nose. He had green eyes. He loved bugs — cockroaches specifically; he was fascinated with their ability to survive anything.

And Kevin was dead. Is dead.

Kevin died here, where Karen comes to, sitting on the floor of her family’s living room. The carpet’s different — there used to be one of those thin, woven ones, for as far back as Karen can remember. The blood had soaked right through it to the hardwood beneath. No hope of getting the stain out.

She didn’t see him die.

It was her first weekend home from college since classes had let out. Graduation at the end of the month. The two of them had sent their parents off to Burlington, after coordinating the theft of their dad’s credit card to pay for the hotel room and tickets to a show.

(They’d agreed that using their parents’ money would make them actually _go_. If Karen and Kevin used their own, mom and dad would just get refunds.)

Karen was in the backyard, with the telescope. Brought down to honor tradition — she and Kevin were marking Karen’s graduation and Kevin’s entry into high school the same way they’d celebrated Karen leaving for college in the first place: tent in the backyard, telescope trained on the sky. Karen’s DSLR on its tripod, exposure set for six hours to capture the rotation of the stars. 

She told him to answer the door, when she heard the car pull up. She told him to answer it. The money for pizza was on a stand by the front entrance. Kevin left the door to the backyard open, and Karen heard the squeak of the spring-lock, swung open too far.

The grass had been pleasantly cool under her bare feet, when she moved to close it, to keep the bugs out. An exasperated huff of air. She was walking towards the back door when the shot rang out. Birds sprang in a small storm of beating feathers from their roosts in the trees; the crickets stopped singing.

Later, they would tell her there’d been shouting. Karen just remembers her movement through the house, quiet as a skilled hunter — ironic, considering Karen had never once managed _not_ to startle a bird or buck when she’d gone out into the woods with her father — working her way to the front on bare feet damp with evening dew, her mission to shut the back door forgotten.

Her father’s office was tucked away off the kitchen, in the back of the house. He hadn’t locked the gun safe he kept there in years, his children well aware that they were never to touch the firearm inside the house; it was dad’s job to transfer it from truck to house, from house to yard.

Karen took the rifle in her hands without bothering to check if it was loaded. Her lawyer would later argue that she’d only meant to scare the men away.

They’d had a problem with coyotes for three seasons now; her father had taken to trying to shoo them away from her mom’s chicken coop by letting off a shot. Karen knew it was loaded as distinctly as she knew where to step on the old hardwood floors so as not to make a sound.

She knew exactly what she was doing.

What she hadn’t meant to do was to plug the man at their door with six .270 caliber bullets, her hands working the bolt and trigger until the sound of dry fire brought her back; the rhythmic click tapping against her ears and setting her blinking down at her bare feet: blue nail polish, a few smears of dirt, a wet blade of grass clinging to her right ankle; and the blood, rising up between her toes.

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Frank says, reaching towards her. He moves slowly, uncertain if she’ll startle, but unable to stop himself. His right hand wraps around her shoulder, which is practically bare — her top has a wide strap that lays over the curve of her shoulder, but leaves her arms exposed. This close, Frank notices the faint freckles forming on her bicep.

He swipes his thumb over a cluster and Karen’s face shifts again, coming back from a lost place to look right at him, eyes bluer with tears; bluer than he’s ever seen. Even the redness encircling them serves to accentuate their shine. For a beat, he watches the rise and fall of her throat.

“Frank?” She whispers.

She sounds so straightforwardly goddamn _young_ that Frank has to sidestep an absurd impulse to gather her up, carry her out of this room. It’s stupid and brief, not something Karen needs (or would abide in the first place). But it passes along his synapses all the same, his left hand curled momentarily in the air near her ribs before pulling back, bereft.

There’s something bombed out about this house. Karen’s got a look on her face like the blast is ringing in her ears.

She whispers something, the words fast enough that Frank doesn’t catch them at first. But then she repeats them, voice just loud enough: “I did this. _I did this._ I _did this_.”

Frank squeezes her shoulder gently. “Karen. What did you do?”

Her eyes flash — furious blue. Hottest star blue. She wrenches herself out from under his touch and crawls forward on her hands and knees. Her hands shake as she wraps them around the edges of the living room rug and yanks it back, her entire body rocking with the force.

She nearly collides with Frank, forcing him to shuffle backward.

The carpet pulls away to reveal a discolored section of hardwood, dark and uneven; large enough to stretch across the living room floor.

Frank knows a bloodstain when he sees one.

She doesn’t quite fall, but she’s not steady when she takes a seat on the lump of carpet, either. Frank can’t determine if her legs gave out or if she’s collapsed in frustration – the same convulsive anger in the movement that he sees in her when she stamps her foot at The Chaste. He’s still in a low crouch beside her.

The bloodstain reaches just under the couch. They both stare at it.

“He’s dead,” she says, a note of hysteria in her voice that makes it sound louder than it actually is, balanced precariously on the edge of shouting. “I — I told him to answer the door. He was _fourteen_ , and I told him to answer it.”  

At first, Frank doesn’t say anything. In the quiet, he hears birds outside, singing.

Grief is a familiar landscape, where the dead leave people behind. It’s an understanding which hadn’t sat right with Frank since childhood, even before his mother got sick; since Lauren and St. Mary’s and wondering how anyone could love a God who would damn a child for finding a way out. Long before the Corps, before training drilled it into him: you _don’t_ leave someone behind. _Semper Fidelis_ was the oldest way to say it, and Frank had taken hold of it with both hands and never let it go.

Grief is also the place you end up when you try to follow. He’d spent weeks — months — looking for the road out; the road to the next place. To wherever Maria and the baby had gone. He never found it. So he adapted to the terrain; cauterized his wounds and built a place to survive in it.

From the look of it, Karen hasn’t realized she can’t follow yet.

Frank’s company hadn’t sustained a single KIA in the invasion; their only casualty a sergeant who got shot in the leg. Frank remembers, still, talking to the corporal who’d been with him when it happened. The corporal was twenty-six — not much older than Frank, at the time — and gutted by failure. He’d been in the turret, manning the .50 cal. He should’ve kept his sergeant safe.

Frank remembers telling him that it wasn’t his fault; that sometimes the enemy was a motherfucker and that if anyone had failed, it was him. He was the captain. He gave the orders.

But those were Marines. _Fourteen_ is something different. The corner of Frank’s lip curls momentarily, nose twitching in time.

(Four more years and Kevin could’ve joined up. Every culture has its parameters for child sacrifice.)

“Karen —” Frank starts, pulling back from his thoughts, allowing some of the words he’d offered the corporal that day to form on his tongue.

Karen shakes her head. “I heard it, y’know?” she says, echoing his own phrasing from months ago, when she’d finally let herself loose on him. “I —” She opens and closes her mouth; bites her bottom lip and opens a small tear there; blood wells in minuscule droplets and gathers on her teeth. Little white grave markers splashed with red. “I heard it. And I —” Another pause. Another wet inhale. She begins to shake next to him.

Frank reaches out instinctively, unsure of himself, of what precisely he’s trying to do. But when the edges of his knuckles brush the back of Karen’s hand, she takes over; laces her fingers through his and digs in.

Their positions put his wrist at an awkward angle. Frank takes a seat beside her on the mound of rolled up carpet, straightening out his wrist and bringing their forearms together. Karen’s grip on his hand quickly turns vice-like; she’s using it like a guard rail, as if it’s all that’s holding her up. Her nails are sharper than Frank would have guessed, burying themselves in the soft skin between his knuckles.

She doesn’t seem to notice. Frank breathes through his nose, slow. Watches her.

A mean jerk of her mouth, before it flattens out into a grim pink line. “I took the rifle from the safe,” she continues. Her voice is absent; clear and toneless and not like Karen’s ever sounded before. Frank looks at her and sits very still. “When I got here, Kevin was on the ground. I put six rounds in the one with the gun.”

She seems steady the way ash is steady, retaining the shape of what it was before fire chewed out all the connective tissue. When she speaks again, her voice has mutated once more — a harsh whisper, now: “I didn’t...”

Her left hand trembles in Frank’s with the force of her grip, a leaden feeling moving into his fingers as Karen cuts off circulation.

“I didn’t hear the shots. I, I only heard the click, when it was empty.” She draws an uneven breath, lips pursed slightly around the exhale, like she’s trying to calm herself down. “Then I woke up. My feet were… covered in blood. _His_ blood.” Her voice cracks when she amends, “ _Their_ blood.”

He feels something wet on his hand. Frank looks down at two bright rivulets of blood, tracing from where Karen’s nails have broken the skin, in the meat on either side of his middle knuckle, down to the knob of his wrist. There are four small cuts, total — all bleeding, but only two deep enough to reach across his skin in a slow trickle.

Some drips onto the underside of the carpet between them, a single perfect circle of red soaking in. Frank blinks down at it, settling into the sting. He presses the pad of his thumb into the back of her hand.

So. She’d shot the man who shot her kid brother.

The Karen that exists in Frank’s head — with her hair trigger flush, her doe eyes, her habit of stamping one pump when she’s annoyed — reshapes with the knowledge. What he finds is that she doesn’t look that different at all.

When they’d told him Maria was dead, he hadn’t understood it. They explained that he was confused. That he’d been shot in the head, and subsequently been in a coma; that it would make things hard to remember and harder to understand once he did. Like the fact that his fiancée and the baby inside her weren’t alive anymore.

What the VA doctors hadn’t counted on was that it wasn’t _death_ Frank couldn’t accept. Death, he understood well. He’d seen and heard and felt and _smelled_ enough of it, coiled and continual thing that it was.

What he didn’t — couldn’t — comprehend was that they weren’t able to tell him whose fault it was.

 _An accident_. That was all. _It was an accident._

Frank needed a place to put the blame. Someone — something — took Maria and the baby away. And Frank needed to look that thing in the eye and kill it back. But everyone he spoke to — the doctors, the mandated shrinks, they all said the same shit: _an accident_.

So when Frank looks at Karen, her blue eyes wild as all hell, the lines of her throat skipping as she drags air into her heaving chest, he nods. “Good.”

Karen blinks. Her head tilts, shoulder pressing into Frank’s. The quirk of her head, the furrow that sneaks into her brow — they’re familiar; his response enough of a shock to snap Karen back to center.

“What?” she asks, breathless.

“You killed him,” Frank says, the slow nod that punctuates his words coming of its own accord. “I think that’s good.” A tight shrug. Karen’s nails are still embedded in his hand. He looks away from her, eyes dragging across the living room floor.

(The chaplain had been the only one to point him in a single direction. Said some shit about how _God needed angels_.)

“Any… _maggot_ ,” the word comes out ugly, his lip hooked into a snarl; jaw clenching, “comes after your family…” Frank takes a deep breath, chews on the swell of anger for a moment. “You do what you gotta do.”

(Sometimes, he’d like to get his hands on God.)

Karen stares at him. She doesn’t speak. Her eyes do all the work — their flammable blue churning, gnawing on his words. Her hand pulls incredibly tighter around his. The presence of her nails wedged into his skin makes itself known through the numbness in his fingers, like tracking a surgeon’s movements through the heavy curtain of local anesthesia. There’s pain, there, if Frank were to acknowledge it. But he exhales through his nose and loses himself to the willful blankness of his thoughts, and doesn’t let it in. Mind over matter. It’s the most he can do for her. (More than he could do for _her_.)

He’s not sure how long they sit like that. How long Frank’s assurance lingers between them as Karen digests. But the silence breaks in half when she startles beside him, a sudden gasp pulling Frank blinking back to alertness. Karen jerks his hand. 

There’s a spot of blood on her thigh. More on the underside of the carpet. Frank’s blood, this time.

“ _Shit_ ,” Karen hisses. She stands, looking down at him, the fresh stains on the bunched up rug, the red on her thigh. “Goddamn _it_ — I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…”

Frank frowns. “Kare,” he mutters — his voice is soft and unintentional, more breath than tone; the final letter of her name merely an inaudible tap of Frank’s tongue against his hard palate. He glances at where she’s still holding his hand, their arms a bridge between where he sits and she stands.

She drops his hand like hot metal and almost jumps backwards. “Shit,” she spits again, her cheeks rapidly beginning to burn. “I’m so sorry, I —” She touches a hand to her forehead. Waning blood moons crest around the tips of her storm-gray nails.

“Karen,” he starts again, shaking his head. “It’s okay.” Frank hoists himself to a standing position, wrapping his left hand around his abused right. He massages his fingers, feels the dull ache blossom into a pulsing sting in a manner of seconds. Karen takes a step back, away from him, as he rises. “I can take care of it.”

Karen shakes her head and rushes forward. Words spill out of her as she does, gathering Frank’s hand in hers. “No, no, no, I… I can fix this.” She goes quiet and assesses the wounds between his knuckles. Her front teeth worry her bottom lip, the deepening red accentuating the lighter, more mottled pink of her cheeks. She looks simultaneously focused and embarrassed, sharp eyes skirting Frank’s gaze. “Let me… Up… upstairs. There’s first aid stuff in the bathroom.”

She takes both his hands — gingerly, this time — and pulls, side-stepping the gathered rug and guiding him into the next room. 

The stairs are to the left of the dining table (oval-shaped, made of dark wood with six forest green chairs arranged around it), and look as worn as the rest of the house. Older than Frank thinks he can really wrap his head around. He tries to imagine what it would feel like growing up in a place like this. The history, here.

Not that the city doesn’t have history — no fucking shit, it does. But Newark’s North Ward is different, ever-shifting; a neighborhood living on the bones of the hundred other ideas built up and torn down before it. This house’s history feels self contained, the age of the structure itself and the land it rests on gathering into a hush. A home built to last, framed by the solitude of nature.

When they reach the stairs, Karen drops his hands again. Her braid is tucked over one shoulder, exposing the back of her neck — skin pink, a knot of vertebrae visible over her collar — as she turns her back to him and begins climbing the stairs.

Frank follows her up to a narrow, L-shaped hallway. They veer right at the top of the stairs, into an open bathroom doorway.

Karen huffs as she walks through the door to the window directly across from it. Frank steps in behind her. The bathroom is neat, if dusty; it’s warm, too, the air stiff. Sunlight beats through the glass, down into the room and onto a small white hutch just beneath the windowsill. Karen leans forward, bending slightly at the waist and grunting quietly as she yanks the window open. It squeaks as she does. Fresh air rushes into the enclosed space.

“Sorry,” Karen mutters after she turns to find herself face-to-face with him. Frank holds his bloodied hand to his chest as she takes a tight sidestep to his left to keep from standing on his toes. She smells like motel soap when she brushes past, going for the sink and vanity on Frank’s right.

Karen reaches into the cupboard behind the mirror and pulls out a brown bottle of peroxide and some q-tips. She gestures at the closed toilet seat across from the sink, bottle in hand. “Sit.”

Frank obliges. Then she gestures for his hand.

Frank squints up at her, rubbing idly at his fingers. Karen shifts on her feet. He makes a quiet sound in the back of his throat, offers up his hand and looks at the floor. He sits still.

The bleeding’s already stopped. Karen doesn’t look at his face as she works, wiping away the stripes of drying blood, carefully cleaning each cut before moving onto the next. There’s a deferential quality to the rhythm of her movements, her absence of eye contact.

By the time she’s on his third knuckle, Frank decides he can’t take her silent apologetic shit anymore.

“Can I ask you somethin’?” he says, careful. He looks up at her through his eyelashes. Nonthreatening.

Karen pauses with his hand still in hers, spent q-tip hovering above a cut. Frank watches the roll of her throat as she swallows, her chin dipping into a tentative nod. She turns to throw the q-tip in the trash. “Uh, yeah,” she breathes as she wets a fresh one with the peroxide. She turns back to him and finally meets his eyes. “Sure.”

“You, uh —” She sets to cleaning the next cut and Frank readjusts, flexes his fingers against Karen’s palm. “You ever find out who they were?” His voice is barely audible. It’s a question that’s been trawling through his thoughts since he sat beside her on that rug. What he knows about her — the way she attacks everything around her with well-researched, acidic interrogation — says yes.

It’s what he would have done.

Karen freezes at the question. Peroxide-soaked q-tip still pressed into Frank’s open skin. He draws the pain inside himself, packs it tight. Her mouth is open a bare inch, inch and a half. The question’s caught her off guard.

Her gaze slips away, and Frank watches her throat expand and constrict as she swallows again. “Yeah, uhm,” she nods to herself. Her brow pinches. She withdraws the q-tip and discards it. “I found out later.”

Frank waits.

Finished with the last knuckle, Karen sets the peroxide on the counter and leans against the sink, arms crooked slightly at her sides with her hands wrapped around the edge of the counter. Frank’s eyes flick to her knuckles, white against the ceramic.

“There was a company,” she starts, “called Union Allied Construction.”

Her gaze is hard, aimed somewhere just past Frank’s head. “The last few years… a lot of people have been buying up land here, moving out of cities. Wanting to build tiny homes or co-ops or whatever.” She swallows convulsively, the two moles on her throat jumping in unison. Her eyes shift and lock on Frank’s. “And Union Allied benefited from every dollar of it.”

Her fingers begin to drum against the counter’s edge. No discernible rhythm; all nerves. “They were trying to strong-arm people into selling their land. Scare them.” She shakes her head. Her hair starts to tumble from from its haphazard braid in small sections, a few baby hairs working loose to frame her face. “The guns were supposed to be just for show.”

Frank scoffs violently in reply. He shakes his head, stares at the wall. “ _Show_ ,” he mocks. “Where I come from, you pull a weapon, you better be ready to use it.”

Karen sighs, shifts her weight in front of him. Frank feels his derision slot into the background, looking back to her.

“I know,” she breathes; her shoulders hunched, the skin around her eyes slightly swollen. Her flush has eased some, skin pale between the remaining swathes of pink. “I, uh…” Karen’s lips twist, almost lifting at the corner before collapsing again. “When I was a little girl, my dad — he, uh. Told me the same thing.” 

Frank tilts his head, lifts his chin to get a better look at her from where he’s perched on the closed toilet lid. The chain on his neck feels heavy. He tries to weigh what information he has about her old man (professor, likes Pete Seeger) and pulls up short. “Your father serve?”

She does laugh then, quietly. The sound is insubstantial and tired as hell. “Uh, no,” Karen shakes her head. The twin moles on her throat skip. “Hunter. He grew up here.”

Frank nods. He doesn’t take his eyes off her for a long moment.

They stay there, inhabiting the quiet — Karen leant against the sink, Frank sitting with his hands cradled in front of him. The open window has relieved the staleness of the air somewhat. The silence between them dwindles as the moment seems to expand, encompassing the wind rustling tree branches outside the window, the birds still singing.

Frank’s eyes wander. He notes a bruise forming on Karen’s shins, a faint nova cloud of blue and purple cutting lengthwise across pale skin. She’d been pressed up against the low lip of the stage during The Defenders’ set the night before, crowded by a congregation of dedicated kids who’d swarmed the stage during the band’s closing cover. She was leaning against the monitors to get a shot of Rand standing on Jessica’s drum kit. The venue hadn’t had a green room. Frank watched her work from the side of the stage.

At the center of the narrow bruising there’s a line of pale, flakey skin, courtesy of the unfinished wood of the stage’s edge beginning to cut into her. She hadn’t said a word.

A percussive _pop pop pop_ fills the bathroom. Frank’s muscles jerk at the sound, gathering in his shoulders; his weight shifting forward onto the balls of his feet as he pulls up slightly from his seat. Karen’s hands skid on the ceramic and knock the opened bottle of peroxide. It tumbles —

Frank catches it as the sudden noise dissolves into birdsong. Spilled peroxide soaks into the dark denim covering his knee.

Karen’s flush is back in force, climbing up her exposed neck. “Jesus,” she hisses, accepting the bottle as Frank offers it. “Sorry,” Karen starts, shaking her head and capping the bottle. “Woodpeckers. I forgot.”

Woodpeckers. Jesus Christ. Frank should know better.

When his attention finds her face again, she’s back to chewing on her lip, turning it a stung shade of deep pink. Looks like it might hurt. Frank sidesteps the impulse to urge her to stop, to relax. Remembers the patient look on his mother’s face, touching her hand to his knee in silent admonishment in the pew on Sundays. _Settle_.

Karen’s eyes meet his. Whatever she sees on his face stills her a moment. “Sorry,” she repeats. Frank’s about to tell her to cut the apologetic shit when she continues, “We should… um. Here, I’ll show you the rest of the house.”

And with that, Karen’s up, pushing off the sink and crossing the bathroom to close the window. Wood creaks when she forces the panes of glass down, stifling the sounds from outside. She turns, and Frank follows her.

Directly across from the bathroom is another door, shut. It’s dotted with dinosaur stickers and bears a handwritten note. Red ink — faded out from the light that beats down on it from the bathroom window — gathers in loose, disproportionate letters; a child’s scrawl. Frank has to squint to make it out as Karen ducks her head and walks past it: _IMPORTENT RESERCH INSIDE_. The final _S_ is backwards.

Karen keeps her eyes trained on the floor and leads Frank down the hallway. She doesn’t look up until they reach a door at the end, beside the stairs. She opens it.

Pale purple registers first. _Lilac_ , the word floats up in his memory. Maria’s voice. _I think I want lilacs for the wedding._

Him, a dumbass if Maria’d ever met one, chuckling. _Those the little purple ones?_

They grew in Mrs. Pizzutti’s yard. Frank’d stolen a handful right out from under her mailbox before he picked Maria up for their first real date — he’d tried to rip them straight from the ground at first, sweaty palms and all. Finally opted to cut the thin wooden stems with his pocket knife. Ended up with grass-stained knees. For all Frank knew, Maria was watching the whole thing from her bedroom window.

The memory doesn’t come alone, a hundred recollections of Maria superimposing themselves over each other in his mind’s eye, stopped stone still on a summer day in a goddamn farmhouse. Frank curls his toes inside his boots, imagines stepping back from all of it.

He blinks away New Jersey, the blanket on the sand in Asbury Park, that last day — her, demanding the beach because it was _tradition_ , even if it was fucking winter — and takes in Vermont with wide open eyes.

“This is, uh, my room,” Karen says.

The lilac walls peek out from beneath heavy adornment: photographs, posters, a print of some painting that only registers in Frank’s head at first as an ecstatic intermingling of eggshell blue and flaxen gold. Then he lets his eyes adjust — the painting itself is still new to him, but the brush strokes are familiar and undeniable: Van Gogh. He’s surprised he still remembers. (The Met had been a good place to hide during the dog days, if he could manage to scrub the rank smell of the street off his skin; air conditioning and pay-what-you-will admission reinventing Frank as a student of art for a summer.)

The room is long, spanning the full side of the house. There are three windows, one for every wall that divides the interior from the open air outside, which enable sunlight to pour into the room from every direction. A bookshelf takes up the entire corner of the room to the right, diagonal to Frank’s position by the door; full to the point of the shelves bowing.

The window to his right faces the front of the house. Against the sill, a telescope glints in the sun. Karen steers clear of it, moving the opposite direction; to the window on Frank’s left, which surveys the backyard.

Frank gravitates to the bookcase on instinct; authors and titles peer back at him as he draws close: Kerouac next to tattered Tamora Pierce mass market paperbacks. Whitman’s _Leaves of Grass_ slid into the narrow space left by a shelf full of _Harry Potter_. Bradbury and Orwell observe Didion, sentinels encasing her _Slouching Toward Bethlehem_.

The books trail off the shelf and Frank follows their slow march, down to the next piece of furniture in the room — Karen’s desk, jammed under the middle window. And an upright easel, complete with art books stacked on the floor beside it high enough to reach Frank’s knees. One lies open on top of the pile. Frank rests his hand on it without thinking, flattening the glossy paper as he looks it over. Munch screams up at him from the page. When Frank withdraws his hand, the shapes of his fingertips are clearly outlined in a fine layer of dust.

He frowns, looks away. Thick sticks of charcoal bake in the sun on the lip of the easel. Frank reaches out again; they’re warm to the touch, sooty.

“— Sorry,” Karen says, the beginning of her sentence lost to Frank. He turns his head, finds her behind him, now, sliding the top drawer of her dresser shut. “I’m just looking for…” she pivots and moves towards another door that Frank hadn’t even noticed, tucked in the far corner of the room. “I’m sure I have extra film,” Karen continues, soft enough that Frank’s pretty sure she isn’t speaking to him anymore.

He follows her unconsciously, moving to study the detritus on top of her dresser: a handful of trophies reflect sunlight, scattering stray glimmers around the room. Frank steps close.

“Basketball?” he asks, tilting one trophy back to read the inscription. _All-state_. Red, glittery plastic fixed to a faux marble base.

“Uh, yeah,” Karen says. Frank turns his head to find her peering out from behind the open door: pink cheeks, her eyes — a darker blue than the sky he can see through the windows — landing on the trophy in his hand.

He looks between her and the trophy and raises one eyebrow. Karen matches his expression, arching one delicate, strawberry blonde brow his direction. “What?” she demands, switch flipped. The corner of Frank’s mouth twitches as she continues, barreling over his burgeoning smile, “I was a mean three-point shooter in high school.”

Frank lowers the trophy back to its home among the half dozen others arranged on her dresser. His index finger leaves a dark shadow on the nameplate. Swiping his hand absent-mindedly across his jeans, he imagines the shit Kathy would give her: _Never woulda pegged you for a jock, Legs. Sure you weren’t a cheerleader?_

“Always the long shot with you, huh?” he asks, chewing idly on the inside of his cheek.

Karen doesn’t reply to that — or if she does, Frank misses it, because she slips behind the open door and out of sight. Frank blinks at the empty space, caught off guard by the revelation that there’s _more_ to the house; that four people had this entire place to themselves. He can only imagine how empty it must have felt, after what happened.

Frank ducks his head, sobered by the thought. He takes a few slow steps after her. The adjoining room Karen’s disappeared into faces the foot of her bed (which Frank inches towards, unwilling to follow her directly into the next room). 

When he gets closer, however, he sees that it’s more than generous to deem the space Karen now occupies a _room_. Waist high tables eat up most of the standing space in the windowless chamber. A wooden dowel prevents Karen from standing upright; she leans forward, stray locks of hair falling into her face as she rummages through a plastic set of drawers.

She’s standing in a closet. Or, what used to be a closet.

Frank’s eyes flick to the window beside the bed, then back to Karen — who reaches up behind herself without looking; a fluid, practiced motion. Her long fingers catch on a thin cord that hangs from the closet’s single light bulb. Ignited, the bulb casts Karen and the cramped room around her in a red glow.

Darkroom. Frank grunts in recognition — the film camera. He nods to himself and lets his eyes fall away from her (brow furrowed, bottom lip between her teeth again, the rattle of plastic drawers as she opens and shuts them with mounting frustration), turning instead to the stack of items on her nightstand. 

More books, precariously piled so high that Frank thinks it might constitute an OSHA violation if this were a public library. Another Didion at the bottom of the stack, a hardback with a tattered dust jacket, the title barely legible: _The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime_ ; Pratchett, spine so worn it curves convexly. But the majority of the stack is comprised of thinner volumes, with glossy covers so well-loved their finishes are beginning to peel away from the print beneath.

A scowl framed by cigarette smoke stares up at him from the very top of the pile. Misshapen glasses — one lens circular and bright red, the other rectangular and green. A faded blue Post-It peeks out from the pages. 

Frank — careful not to use his charcoal-stained fingers — flips to the marked page. Newsprint crackles as he lays it open, dry against his fingers. Frank blinks down at a riot of color and heavily inked line-work.

A comic book. Frank almost snorts, glancing back over his shoulder toward the darkroom. Karen hasn’t emerged yet. He turns back to the page.

Coverboy says, _They assume, like most people, that fear will do the trick. Fear will keep everyone in place. Fear will keep everyone distracted from what’s going on. Let him know we can beat him up, let him know we could have him killed, let him know we can destroy him, let the fear shrivel him up. Fuck that. I’m not afraid of them. They’re afraid of me. They’re afraid of the truth._

His chuckle is dry; threaded with equal measures of bitterness and recognition. He moves to set the volume aside, inspect the ones beneath it. Then he stops short.

All at once, he thinks better of rifling through her shit. Karen doesn’t seem to care — doesn’t seem to be paying him any mind at all. But being here fucks her up. Frank might be pushing an advantage he didn’t realize he had.

He steps back from her bedside table, shoves his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and circles back to Karen’s desk, training his gaze out the window overlooking the side of the house. Frank breathes in the light, dust-ridden air of Karen’s room, and trails his eyes over the tops of trees.

His own room growing up had been on the first floor, with a postage stamp window looking over the narrow sidewalk dividing his house from the next, treating Frank to a view of concrete or poorly kept siding, depending on the angle. Only good it ever did him was serve as his own private entrance and exit, a way to slip out for the nighttime walks he’d been partial to since his mother let him start walking around the neighborhood unaccompanied at nine, ten years old.

(And later, an ideal way for Maria to get ahold of him at all hours, her fingers tapping on the glass like she had to ask permission; like Frank didn’t leave the window unlocked for her, anyway.)

The snap and rattle of the darkroom’s light being turned off pulls Frank back from the ledge of memory. He lifts his head.

When Karen closes the door, there are three canisters of film in her hand — it seems like a lot of fuss for three little tubes of plastic. Frank doesn’t mention it.

“You, uhm. Ready?” she asks. Her eyes are wide, her gaze taking a beat to settle on his.

Frank nods, exhales. It’s not really him they’re waiting on; but he gives Karen the out anyway. Steps aside to let her lead them down the stairs.

In the hallway, Karen stops just shy of the door to what Frank presumes is Kevin’s room. He slows, pulls to a stop beside her. She’s white knuckling the film canisters in her grip, joints pushing tight against skin that seems to barely hold her bones inside. Frank swallows the urge to take the film from her.

Her head’s dipped forward, that braid — looser every second, locks of strawberry blonde working their way free piece by piece — falling against her cheek, the side of her jaw. Even though Frank can’t see her eyes, he can guess what she’s looking at.

He swallows, hard. His throat feels like sandpaper, all the way down.

“Hey,” he starts. His hands, still in the pockets of his hoodie, twist in the old fabric, finding holes and loose threads at the seam. “Meet you at the van, yeah?”

When she lifts her head, the whites of her eyes are rimmed with red. Frank diverts his attention to his boots against the hardwood, nodding once before turning tail and heading down the stairs.

He stops in the living room and rolls the carpet back into place, vanishing the bloodstain before making his retreat from Karen’s haunted house.

 

* * *

 

His bed is unmade; the way he’d left it, that last morning.

 

* * *

 

With the tumble of the lock, Karen gathers every frayed nerve ending, every loose thread of memory — Kevin’s laugh; the lines on the inside of his doorframe charting their growth: their heights at two, six, ten, thirteen scratched into the wood — and locks them inside the house. She slips her keys into her pocket and walks away. 

Frank is leaning against the van, extinguishing a cigarette against the sole of his boot when Karen approaches the driver’s side door. Gravel crunches under her feet. His face is unreadable; eyes narrowed in her direction, the sun at her back — catching lighter tones of brown amongst the dark stubble on Frank’s scalp.

“Hey,” he greets her. His head is bowed slightly. It takes a moment for her to re-acclimate to his body language, the translation arriving a beat later: _You okay?_ hangs unsaid between them; it’s in the angle of his shoulders, the way his eyes meet hers through thick, dark lashes.

(The early afternoon sun makes them all the more noticeable, throwing them into stark contrast with the lines of his cheekbones.)

Karen tracks her breath as it travels from her lungs, scrapes up her airway and out her mouth into the bright world. She nods at him. “Hey.” _I’m okay._

It’s a silent lie closely followed by a pang of guilt, which in turn is chased away by the way Frank’s looking at her. She watches his answering nod and exhales again. A little easier, this time.

Then she swallows forcefully and jerks her head towards the van. Pulling the van keys from her other pocket, Karen ignores the weight of the house keys against her left hip. “C’mon,” she says quietly.

The locks release. They climb into their seats. Stale summer air, having cooked in the interior while they wandered the house, fills Karen’s lungs; a leaden weight. She’s quick to turn over the engine, roll down both her and Frank’s windows in a bid to shoo out the oppressive air.

The radio clicks on. Beside her, Frank leans forward and discards a cigarette butt into the ashtray. Karen’s eyes land on the back of his hand: four sickle-shaped cuts framing his knuckles; pink at the edges, blood red centers beginning to dry a dull rust color. Her stomach twists.

“Frank —” Karen’s voice betrays her, cracking severely down the center of his name. She looks to her lap. Someone on an NPR affiliate station cautions record-high humidity nationwide.

His gaze burns a hole through her middle and Karen forces herself to turn. The threads of amber the sunlight teases out of the deep browns of his irises fail to distract her from the sick sensation in her gut.

She’s still got her hand on the keys in the ignition. She kills the engine, chews the corner of her bottom lip. Her eyes move to her own hands, which she pulls into her lap. “I’m sorry,” she mutters, turning her attention to his right hand, now perched on one knee — the same knee with the drying peroxide stain, thanks to her. “I didn’t mean to…” she gestures towards his hand, the stain on his jeans.

She glances out the windshield. Takes a shallow, fragile breath. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Frank grunts, snapping Karen’s focus to his face. He looks — confused. “You didn’t,” he replies.

 _Jesus_. Her face creases with frustration, a touch of bewilderment. Of _course_ she hurt him, the evidence is _right there_. And she has to own up to it, because it shouldn’t have happened; she should have realized what was going on. She shouldn’t have been holding his hand in the first place. What the hell was _wrong_ with her?

“Yes, I did,” Karen insists, guilt and anger edging into her voice. “I… _cut_ you, Frank, I —” she sucks in a breath. Forces herself to wait out the bile churning in her chest. “The fact that I caused you pain…” the words are clumsy. Karen sighs, meets his eyes. Stays there. “That matters,” she finishes, “to me.”

“That’s just stimuli,” Frank says. She almost doesn’t hear him, his voice is so quiet. He shakes his head.

Karen, however, scoffs. “What?”

“Pain,” he clarifies. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. A slow, contained sway returns to his shoulders. “It’s the body reacting to stimuli. You can get used to it.” His voice has the texture of sediment, low and thick.

The words land like a bolt to the chest. Karen’s eyes shift to the bullet scar on his scalp, then the fresh bruise under his eye and small laceration on his forehead, both aftermath of last night’s show; then down to his arms, where (though presently hidden by the sleeves of his hoodie) she knows there’s already a deep scar on one forearm, and a new one forming on the other. All to say nothing of what she’d glimpsed in the motel room, in the handful of seconds before and after he’d taken off the shoulder brace. 

(Karen’s eyes flick momentarily to one exposed collarbone over the zipper of his sweatshirt, wondering if he’s wearing it right now; if it’s tight enough to hurt, or if he’s _gotten used_ to that, too.) 

Before, she’d written off Frank’s non-reaction to injury as a product of circumstance and adrenaline. He was a marine. He’s trained. He can handle himself in high-stress situations.

A rabid pit at a show. A fist-turned-knife-fight in a back alley. It made sense, with the picture she’d painted for herself.

But this — her holding onto him so tight she drew blood in four places — wasn’t _high-stress_. Wasn’t combat, or survival. It was just her, crying and holding his hand. And he didn’t tell her to stop. Didn’t _flinch_.

 _You can get used to it._ Get used to pain? Karen looks at her hands, rolls the keys between them. The metal teeth dig into her palm, skin smarting with the pressure.

Once, when she was a kid — no more than five years old — she’d burned herself on the waffle maker. Been too busy dousing her plate of waffles in a blizzard of powdered sugar to pay attention. She remembers crying out, and her mother springing into action; filling a casserole dish with ice water and submerging Karen’s forearm in it, phone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she arranged to get Karen in to see the pediatrician.

The doctor had given her a lollipop and some gel, to apply to the burn. _Now you know to be careful around hot things, right?_ he’d asked.

That’s what pain is for. To teach, to warn. But somehow, Frank had turned that off.

Karen’s stomach churns and she feels no less guilty. Her bottom lip stings when she pulls it between her teeth, the already sensitive skin chewed raw.

“You can adjust to pretty much anything,” Frank starts again, “just as long as there’s routine, right?” He’s faced forward in his seat, staring down into the footwell. His voice faint — as if he’s speaking to himself.

Karen blinks at him. She doesn’t know how to respond to that; what her reaction should even be. She’s about to say something — she doesn’t know what — when Frank takes a breath that stops her; too deliberate not to be in preparation for something.

A breeze catches her hair through the window, warm against her cheek and neck. Frank lifts his chin, stares straight out the windshield.

“I like Springsteen.” His voice is matter-of-fact.

Karen’s thoughts stall and start. A befuddled smile tugs at her mouth. “What?”

Frank doesn’t look at her. “Bruce Springsteen.”

Karen wonders if this is Frank’s bizarre attempt at small talk, at making everything normal again. It reminds her – almost hysterically – of that night in his apartment, his words belabored and steady in the face of her shaky quiet: _Point is. You were safe. I just wanted you to know that._ But that doesn’t seem right, the pieces don’t add up. And anyway, they never really do small talk.

She has no idea where to even start, with this. No idea what Frank expects from her.

“Okay,” she offers, after a strange silence.

Frank frowns; his eyes darting over the dash, jaw working. Abruptly, it occurs to Karen that his brain might be trying to push through something she doesn’t fully understand. She remembers the notebook, the tiger drawing; wonders if she’s meant to wait for what Frank’s saying to make sense, or if she needs to help, somehow. She sits up straighter in her seat, looks around her like the instructions on what the fuck she’s supposed to do are gonna be taped to the dash.

She freezes when Frank says: “I had… someone, to come home to. In Iraq.”

The space shrinks. Frank isn’t frowning anymore. A thin stoicism overtakes his features, save for his dark eyes: a hair too wide, but not _panicked_ , not even especially alert. Dazed, maybe. Karen stares.

He leans back, lays the crown of his skull against the headrest with his eyes still trained on the windshield. Instinct tells Karen to keep her mouth shut and wait it out. She takes two deep breaths in the time that passes before Frank speaks again.

“You gotta cross the ocean, and go fight,” he starts, “Whole time you’re thinking you’re gonna be scared, right?” His voice is in its lowest register, dulcet in the enclosed space. A shadow of reverence stalks his diction. Karen is struck with the thought: _this is the voice you use in church._

Karen doesn’t answer his question; she knows he wasn’t scared; that being a marine was something he loved. But a realization washes down her spine and pools, icy cold, at the small of her back: this isn’t about _that_.

“But then you’re not.” Frank’s eyes study something Karen can’t – will never – see. He continues, “That part was… was always easy for me. Killing. Even watching my buddies die. It didn’t mean nothin’.” Frank inhales, a slow rasp through his nose. He doesn’t blink.

“Only time I got scared was on the plane home. Kept thinking God was gonna pull the rug out from under us, y’know? Shit, that’s His kind of funny.” One side of Frank’s nose wrinkles; his lips hook up at the corner — bitter, but without force. The expression passes over his face like a mirage, there and gone in the time it takes Karen to process it.

“But the plane always landed safe. And you know, you can’t even…” he stops short. Karen watches his pupils dart from side to side for a moment, broken from their spell. She doesn’t know what to do with the ill-feeling that dawns in her stomach as his stony features crack into a rockslide of microexpressions.

“Can’t even understand it. How, how something like that… how is someone that beautiful waiting around for me, y’know?” His head disconnects from the headrest, tilting to the side. It angles his face toward Karen. He looks — gently perplexed, his mouth hanging open in something like a smile.  

He meets Karen’s eyes like she’s supposed to have an answer, before his gaze slips away.

“I step out of the gate, she looks up and she sees me. And I see her.” Karen’s eyes drop to Frank’s Adam’s apple — shifting convulsively in his throat, now. “By God, that’s real.” His voice goes so quiet and wet Karen leans closer reflexively. “And then you go home, and the place is the exact same. _Exact_ same. Like it was just holding its breath waiting for me to get back. Every time.”

A tremor threads through Frank’s face, then, like an electric current traveling just beneath his skin. The next second, his expression goes blank.

“We were, ah,” his tongue darts across his upper lip, eyes re-focusing on the dash in front of him, “renting a house in Passaic, my last deployment. Guess we figured we were gonna end up getting married, ‘fore I actually got my shit together and asked her.”

Karen swallows. The glacier forming at her back begins to spread deep, mooring itself in her stomach. “But you did?”

Frank turns, blinking in Karen’s direction.

“Ask her,” Karen clarifies. It doesn’t sound like a question.

Frank whets his lips. Swallows. “Yeah,” he breathes, staring at Karen a beat longer before ducking his head, frowning momentarily at his boots in the footwell. “We uh…we grew up together. Girl next door, all that shit.”

A moment’s pause. Frank pulls his hands from his pockets, begins idly massaging the fingers of his right.

Karen shifts in her seat, seeking an escape from the frost trapping her there. Curiosity takes over. “What was her name?”

His fidgeting stills. Karen tracks the rise and fall of his shoulders, hunched slightly in his seat as Frank considers his hands.

She knows if he were to turn to the left, just slightly, she’d see the blood dark stripe beneath his right eye, the cut on his forehead. But he’s in profile to her. Karen only sees the uninjured side of his face, now.

Both hands are open-palmed, cradled in his lap. For once, he hasn’t pushed the sleeves of his hoodie up his forearms; the cuffs gather around his wrists, the _SHER_ inked into the knuckles of his left hand unblemished by bruises. Bright, warm afternoon sunlight diffuses throughout the cab of the van, and Frank sits with his head bowed, very still. Dust motes — lit up white and stirred by the same breeze which touches Karen’s hair — churn in the air in front of his face.

Karen is struck by how disarmingly peaceful a snapshot it is: Frank in a hoodie so worn the fabric drapes in soft folds over his arms and torso, the outline of his body clearly defined through thin fabric; the dog tags and ring around his neck press against the hoodie from the inside, a lump on Frank’s chest that stops Karen’s thoughts in their tracks.

The ring. She’d never actually asked if it belonged to his mother, only made the assumption; linked together the question and answer from the information he’d given her in one morning’s breakfast.

Ben Urich — her mentor, her favorite professor — chastises her. The heavy lines of his face folding down in that frown which Karen always fought tooth and nail to avoid in class. _People’ve got whole lives, Karen. You can’t ever_ know _your subject. You just have to convince your reader you do._

Karen looks back to Frank’s face and breathes through the sinking sensation in her gut.

“Maria.” His head remains bent. Frank speaks the answer into his chest, his empty hands. “Springsteen was her favorite,” he adds. Guilt like a stone plunges through the ice formed in Karen’s stomach.

Then he turns to her with a measured calm, eyes suddenly more tired than Karen’s ever seen them. “We emailed, wrote letters, alla that. Phone calls, when we could, right.”

Karen nods slowly.

“Yeah,” he licks his bottom lip and switches his focus to the steering wheel. His eyes stay anchored there as he continues, “Wasn’t much, but, y’know. Ten minutes hearing her voice, after two months of reading letters in the wrong goddamn order. I,” he whets his lips again, clenches his jaw, “I called every night I could. Every single night, but then, I. Don’t remember what… what bullshit it was, made me think…”

The trailed off self-interrogation is familiar to Karen, an old friend who rises up in her chest and presses against her ribcage, as if leaning towards Frank. She holds it back; knowing just as well that a placation like _I know how you feel_ won’t help anything.

And — she acknowledges with a self conscious twist in her gut — it’d only be half true, besides.

Frank’s tongue darts over his upper lip. “I was so goddamn tired.” His head lolls back against the headrest a beat, turning in Karen’s direction without meeting her eyes. “You ever been tired, Kare?”

That, again. _Kare_ , half formed — she can see his mouth wrap around the shape of her name, the final syllable lost to the low drag of his breath.

In the ensuing quiet Karen can just hear the wind rushing through the long grass at the border of the driveway. She thinks about the last summer she spent on this land. 

“Yeah,” she answers.

“Yeah,” he echoes, rolling his skull against the headrest until he’s facing forward again. “It was the only time I ever put down the phone before our time was up. ‘I’m tired, baby. I’ll… call you tomorrow. I promise.’” Frank’s voice shudders on the word — _promise_ ; as cataclysmic as she’s ever heard him. “Never think that for us there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow. That the last time I heard her voice she’d be asking me to stay on the line. And I’d say no.”

His voice takes a hard edge as he finishes. His mouth becoming an angry, flat line. A still, inwardly-directed rage Karen’s seen before.

 _I heard it_.

She’d read about survivor’s guilt before she’d ever felt it.

“Did she, um,” she hears herself begin to ask. Her voice matches his, pitch for pitch. The unfinished sentence barely seems to make it out of her throat. 

“Accident.” He cuts Karen off when he speaks and she’s thankful to be spared the question.

Karen listens to him take a deep, careful breath; watches the deliberate lowering of his shoulders before renewing their tight, pendular rocking. Whatever’s next is going to be hard, for him, she realizes. Karen braces herself.

“Day I got shot, she was driving. The car got totaled and she was… she was alive, when they got to the hospital.” He blinks, slow. “Bled out in surgery, later.”

Something shatters in Karen’s chest. She almost thinks she can hear the snap – like bone or glass, something intricate meant to hold her torso together. Her already fractured sense of what’s fair, what’s right and wrong and what people deserve – patched with duct tape and paperclips. It all tumbles into a cold gulf between her lungs and diaphragm.

Unable to keep looking directly at him, Karen’s gaze flicks down from the fan of his lashes to the pinpricks of reflected sunlight in the silver chain around his neck. That’s when she notices the pink flush reaching up Frank’s throat, and follows it up the hard tick of his pulse point, back to his face; realizes how glassy his eyes have become.

Frank’s mouth hangs open for a few long seconds before he snaps it shut, swallowing thickly. Karen can hear his throat working. “It was my job to keep her safe. I didn’t.”

His voice is so final that Karen feels like the floor of the van is opening up, and the ground beneath that; breaking open its black jaws to swallow them both. 

And for a moment, the arctic waters in Karen’s middle rage, black cold hardening to black anger. Because that’s just _bullshit_. It’s bullshit that Frank’s beating himself up because his fiancée died in an _accident_ when he was busy getting _shot_ _in the head_ across the globe. There is no way he could have kept her safe.

A monster howls in Karen’s throat, ugly and covetous. _Kevin’s_ death was her fault. She was allowed to say that. Frank, who had nothing to do with Maria getting in the car that day, has no right to blame himself. Grief’s esurient hands wrap around Karen’s shoulders as it whispers, tempting, _how dare he._

Frank’s hand stretches out then. Karen watches with wide eyes, a lightning strike of confusion igniting her insides until his direction is clear: his fingers twitch over the knob of the radio, as if he’s forgotten the van’s shut off.

 _Springsteen was her favorite._ Frank, earlier that morning, reaching over to switch the radio station without a word. Behind Karen’s ribs, her unjust anger crumples.

Karen’s dragged from the memory by a short huff of air, the slough of fabric as Frank shoves his hands back inside the pockets of his sweatshirt. When Karen looks at him, he’s smiling. It’s a miserable expression. She bites down on the urge to close her eyes. 

“Maria, she.” His words come in fragments, bursts of shrapnel that cut. “Y’know, we gave each other shit about it. That she didn’t just break my heart — she’d rip it out, tear it apart, step on that shit, feed it to a dog. She was _ruthless_. She brought the pain.” The smile-that-is-not-a-smile dies by degrees, as he speaks. “But she’ll never hurt me again.”

The finality of his words slams Karen in the chest. She leans back in her seat. Thinks about how many times she’s wished to God, the Devil, the Universe – _anything_ that would listen – for another stupid fight with her brother. She’d even take the pranks, his obsession with cutting a potato in half and using the starch to leave frightening messages in the bathroom mirror that would appear with the steam of her shower.  

“I know the feeling,” Karen mutters, dropping her attention to her hands on her lap.

Frank turns towards her. The movement calls her attention back up, but he keeps his eye-line low, ducking out of reach of Karen’s. The fabric of his hoodie shifts against his sides. Karen would guess his hands are fists inside his pockets. 

“People think grief is pain,” he says, grave. “It’s not pain. It’s time. Years go by and you can’t do shit to stop it. Everybody forgets, or _moves on_ ,” his voice is a sneer, twisting around those last two words.

For a moment he looks so openly disdainful Karen shrinks in her seat — knowing full well the contempt isn’t meant for her, but struck by the heat of it all the same.

Frank’s gaze is hard on the dash, fixed in place as he continues, “And you wonder where it all went, how… how one second it can feel like a hundred fucking years have passed and the next you’re so goddamn sure she’s just, she’s. She’s in the other room, y’know? Not gone, just. Hiding.”

Kevin looks back at Karen, crouched between the couch and the wall; his wide child’s gaze, green and shining in the shadowed hiding spot. Staring at her for years. Now nothing but a bloodstain.

Frank goes still, some measure of tension releasing in his shoulders, his dark eyes less wide. A frozen calm, colored by resignation. When he speaks again, his voice is at once softer and steadier, a low, clear rumble: “Grief, it… it makes you a relic overnight. And you slowly realize that part of your life, that… that love. It’s over. And now all you got is time.”

“What are we supposed to do with it?” Karen asks, the words clawing up through her dry throat of their own accord. They surprise her, and when Frank’s gaze — _finally_ — flickers to hers, she regards him with wide eyes and hot cheeks before clarifying, “The time.”

Frank huffs, his shoulders coming up, nearly framing his ears before lowering wearily. “Yeah, I don’t…” He breathes out again, a long rasp which makes his nostrils flare — a smoker’s exhale. “Look, I’m alone.”

Heat ripples through her, a red flash in Karen’s mind; outrage flooding her thoughts like hot oil. _Bullshit_ — the word is perched on the edge of her tongue, buoyed by the knowledge that, of course, Frank isn’t alone. Kathy, Micro, Rachel; they each come running across the stage of her psyche, followed close by the ragtag crew which calls The Safehouse home base: Spacker Dave and Quentin, Joan, Logan. _Alone_ is not a word Karen would ever ascribe to Frank.

But she holds it back, chews the word into her cheek, as Frank goes on, “I’ve been alone so long, I like it. Y’know, I,” his voice is hushed, “I hide in it.” 

She watches him sway toward her, incrementally. The way his brow pinches, two long lines appearing over his dark eyebrows, one of which bends more sharply than the other. She thinks of his apartment; of blood on his card table and a twin size mattress framed by bookshelves, and the churning resentment in her stomach quiets.

 _Alone_ restructures itself in her thoughts, her brain offering the translation: _Lonely_.

“One thing I know,” Frank continues, a little louder now as his voice reaches up from the trench, “is that the only way out… is to find something that you care about.”

Karen remembers her first night with Leatherneck at The Safehouse: the four of them spread out in the green room; Kathy and Micro on either side of the couch, flanking Rachel and Frank perched on the very back and the cushions, respectively. A punk rock family portrait making her ache for her camera, her sketchbook, her oil paints.

Frank’s mouth hangs open, a bare centimeter; the sway in his shoulders pauses a half second before his lips curl into a small, wry smile. “This shit, this… thing you have, makes you such a pain in the ass —”

Karen scoffs, gaze sliding up and out the driver’s side window just as she senses Frank’s eyes flick to her face. She feels the low thrum of his satisfaction at managing to give her shit in the middle of this fucked up pep talk like a nudge against her shoulder.

He keeps talking, in a tone sure and warm. “It might make you completely batshit, but. It’s the reason you’re gonna get through this.”

 _Batshit_. It’s a regurgitation of the word the skinhead had thrown at Frank in the moments before they started to trade blows. It’s not the word that Ellison had used and it wasn’t the word that Matt had used either, when she’d told them she was writing about Frank; but it was _there_ , the coat of primer under the paint of their words.

“And you’ve found something to do that for you.” She speaks quietly, voice imbued with an answering warmth; drawn out of her by the combination of Frank’s assurance and the memory of them all gathered at The Safehouse. An anchoring weight settles in her chest.

Frank pulls a hand from his pocket and rubs the crown of his head with an open palm; rests his hand on his thigh, after. His thumb taps against dark denim. There’s a blown look in his eyes that sweeps in as he sways to one side and silently absorbs Karen’s words. Gives her a nod as he lowers his head to look at his knees, mouth working.

Then, right then, something in his bearing seems very young.

Karen’s flush is so immediate it almost hurts. 

“We should probably get back,” Karen says, swallowing down an ache in her throat, willing the heat from her cheeks. She straightens in her seat and turns the keys in the ignition.

 

* * *

  

 **Karen Page (802-548-3020)** **  
** _Hey, Mom – the house seems fine, might want to hire someone to take care of the lawn, but otherwise everything looks alright. I miss you too. Give Dad my best._

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Karen,” Micro’s whisper reaches through Karen’s dream. She’s sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, the windshield before her peppered with bullet holes. A seat belt cuts into her clavicle.

“Psst. Karen,” they whisper again. Her eyes fly open; Micro is standing over her. The whites of their eyes seem too bright behind purple-tinted lenses. Karen is instantly aware that it’s not a seatbelt pressing down on her shoulder, but the steady weight of Micro’s hand, gently shaking her awake.

Karen pulls in a breath. “Jesus,” she mutters, sitting up in the lumpy motel bed with a pulsing ache in her back. It’s morning-dark — that’s what makes Micro’s eyes so unearthly. With the curtains still drawn, the room is the color of pitch. It takes a minute for her mind to catch up to the fact that she’s the only person still in bed.

“Sorry.” Micro offers a sympathetic smile, small enough that only one dimple emerges in their full cheeks. “We’re rolling out.”

First she blinks, swallows. It feels as though there’s sand in her throat. Then, her brow furrows, still too snared in her half-remembered dream to parse Micro’s words. “I. Wait — what?” Karen shakes her head, as if to clear the fog pushing in on her from all sides.

“We’re leaving.” Kathy’s voice cuts through the hush of Micro and Karen’s conversation, fractious.

The interjection pulls Karen’s mental blinds wide open, and she finally takes in the scene before her: Kathy, zipping her purple bag closed on the mattress behind Micro. The door to their motel room is propped open with a trash can, blue pre-dawn light filtering onto the dingy carpet in a thin line. Karen can hear the van idling, and catches sight of Frank standing beside the door; his dark frame couched in indistinct shadow, the wisp of cigarette smoke the lightest thing Karen can see.

Someone — presumably Rachel — spits toothpaste loudly into the sink.

“I…” Karen starts again, but words fail her in a slurry of disorientation. It’s better, she decides — in her first clear thought of the day — to just give in. “Okay.”

She doesn’t bother changing out of her pajamas. She’s confident that at some point there’ll be time and space to dress for the day, and she’ll be awake enough to find the determination not to chicken out of changing and damp-paper-towel showering in whatever truck stop Leatherneck finds on their way into the next town. Kathy had given her enough ‘princess’ shit in the span of one morning the day before.

Instead, Karen pulls her hair back into a bun she’ll regret later, when it’s time to brush out the sleep snarls in her hair, and gives Micro a sharp nod before rising up, shouldering her bags, and following Leatherneck into the morning twilight.

 

* * *

 

Frank is dozing, and he doesn’t notice Karen getting closer until she’s on him. Within minutes of leaving the motel, she’d fallen asleep with her head tipped back against the seat. But a sharp merge sends her swaying against his side, and he doesn’t bother shifting away.

When he glances down, one of her hands falls to the cushion, fingers curled beside his thigh. Frank blinks blearily at the goosebumps on her outer wrist, fine arm hairs raised against the chill of the A/C.

Karen is as insistent in sleep as she is awake, apparently, pressing her cheek against the fabric covering Frank’s shoulder — which is worn thin, a summer hoodie. Frank has it unzipped several inches down his chest. He’s always ran hot. But Karen fidgets and burrows in her sleep, all but shivering against his side. Frank can’t feel any of her body heat. He’s considering leaning forward and shutting off the A/C, maybe, when Micro’s phone begins chiming.

 

* * *

 

When she wakes up again, it’s to the sound of a phone alert, its artificial wind chime tone too sharp to be inoffensive. It goes off once. Twice. Three times. It doesn’t stop.

Desperate to cling to her second sleep of the night, Karen refuses to open her eyes, despite the noise. She curls further into the warmth against her side and tugs her sweater — which she’d only thrown into her bag at the last minute, remembering that the bands were scheduled to play a show on Lake Placid — closer around her head, exposing her bare ankles and calves to the blast of the van’s A/C. At least she’s wearing socks; at least the window she’s pressed against has begun to heat up in the now-risen sun.  

“Micro, fuck, turn that shit off,” Kathy shouts from the last row of seats after the tenth chime. Karen winces and pushes her cheek into the window — too strung out on exhaustion to note a strange give in the glass.

“Shut the fuck up,” Micro replies. Their voice is flat. “Something is happening.”

Karen’s body sways, then, her sweater-blanket slipping down her side as she’s jostled by movement. Her eyes fly open; heart and mind racing, hand flying out to wrap around the edge of the seat.

 _How the_ — she turns her head, trying to understand what the fuck’s moved her if she was pressed against the van door. Her earlier nightmare is still stalking her thoughts when she realizes.

Frank is beside her, his arm warm against Karen’s. His shoulder is stiff, angled to support the remainder of Karen’s weight as she still leans partly against him, her brain not quite caught up with her body. He’s just sat up straight, is now in the process of shuffling over to the middle seat on the bench they’re sharing. That’s what’s displaced her.

She was sleeping _on_ Frank.

Karen blinks at him, his brow already folded into his default frown, if tired at the edges. He doesn’t look bothered by Karen’s weight against his side — doesn’t look to be paying her any mind at all. Until Karen straightens properly in her seat, using Frank’s shoulder for leverage. When she disconnects from him entirely he rolls his shoulders back, once, and pops his neck for good measure. He glances her way, dark eyes unreadable.

Karen pulls her sweater around her shoulders and her knees to her chest, socked toes curling against the seat as a miserable flush crawls — the color of Maine lobster — up her neck and across her entire face. _Jesus Christ_.

Her disregard for personal boundaries, however, is not on Leatherneck’s radar. As she does her damnedest to shrink into the seat, Micro plugs an auxiliary cord into their phone, the van’s speakers snap-crackle-popping to life. Within seconds, everyone is wide awake.

“ _White nationalists armed with lit tiki torches gathered on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville in a parade led by fash fanboy Richard Spencer. Unicorn Riot was on the scene last night and remain on the ground for today’s ‘Unite the Right’ rally_ —”

Any embarrassment Karen feels over using Frank as her personal pillow seems trivial now. Leatherneck takes the news in silence, the anchor continuing on with details for the coming day before switching back to the events of Friday night in greater detail.

When the broadcast begins to play audio from the rally, Frank stomps his foot — it rings out, oddly hollow through the van — and growls, “Turn that shit off.”

Micro complies wordlessly. Karen struggles to see their face in the rearview mirror, their hair hanging in front of their eyes; but she sees the shake in their shoulders, a fine tremor.

The van is silent, save for the wheeze of air conditioning, the rumble of the engine, and the rush of asphalt under the wheels.

A loud crack tears open the quiet; Micro’s thrown their phone against the dash. They kick out convulsively, knee connecting with the glovebox in a painful snap. “ _Fuck!_ ” Micro shouts, nearly doubled over in the passenger seat. There’s a fissure splitting their voice into pieces. “ _Fuck_ ,” they repeat as they flop back against their seat, equally emphatic but exponentially quieter. “I need —”

Rachel cuts them off. “Already on it,” she says. Her voice is as level as it always is, splitting the glacial still of the atmosphere. Karen finds a warmth there she hasn’t, before. Comfort in its infallibility. “Fifteen minutes.”

Micro nods. Karen searches for their gaze in the rearview again, but their jaw is locked, a hard slant to their generous features. She doesn’t know what she could say to make it better anyway.

She fishes her phone out from her bag, tucked on the floor of the van under her feet. The fifteen minutes it takes for Rachel to find the exit into Plattsburgh feels like no time at all, with Karen’s attention buried in the horror captured in her Twitter feed — a deadly, hateful fly thrashing on the point of a needle.

 

* * *

 

 

They don’t stop at the venue first.

Rachel pulls up in front of the first coffeeshop they pass and Micro is out the door before anyone else so much as turns their head to say goodbye, their laptop pressed against their chest; encircled in both arms like a shield against the world.

“They’ll get the bastards,” Kathy mutters as Karen watches Micro through the window. They’re burrowing into a corner seat with their back to the wall when Rachel pulls away from the curb. Karen turns her attention towards Kathy.

“What?” she asks, more perplexed by the soft, relatively unguarded way that Kathy speaks than the words themselves.

“Micro,” she says, when Karen’s eyes find hers. Kathy’s irises are dark brown, almost black. There’s a rawness to her face — maybe it’s the early morning, maybe it’s whatever is happening to Micro, maybe it’s Virginia — but her features seem smaller: the hook in her nose, something which Karen can never quite pinpoint as an old break or genetics; her pouting mouth; the knot of her throat.

“They’ll work their end of shit from up here,” Kathy continues, jerking her head over her shoulder in the direction of where they’d just released Micro. “Make sure those fucking… fascist pissants don’t have a life to go back to.”

It takes a moment for the statement to click, in Karen’s heads. A collection of asides, snippets of conversation, and fractal early research rearranges itself. Frank, in The Safehouse’s kitchen, grunting, _That shit you do with the computers, that works._

Karen nods. “Good.”

The remainder of Leatherneck is on edge as they roll through Plattsburgh, the town still coated in a sleepy morning fog that rolls in off the lake. The show isn’t for several hours. No one speaks, and Karen distracts herself from the stilted silence by obsessively refreshing her Twitter feed. When she sees NPR making claims about ‘leftwing agitators’ she thumbs over to Leatherneck’s scant twitter account and mines their follow list for news sources.

 

* * *

 

“Hey Legs,” Kathy says when they finally — _finally_ — stop at the venue, “help us out with this shit?” It’s a plain question, free of malignancy or spite. Any other day it would stop Karen dead with suspicion.  

But it’s asked to a quiet van, Kathy’s voice breaking a long silence. Frank has shuffled back over to the opposite end of the bench Karen shares with him, his hood drawn up. He doesn’t even move when Rachel kills the engine, head bowed and clenched fists hanging off his knees.

“Legs?”

Karen blinks and forces herself to pull back — unwind the tight coil of attention she has trained on Frank and cast her net outward. Kathy’s got her hands wrapped around the back of the middle bench, as if prepared to vault over it any second. Her brown eyes meet Karen’s with an expectant stare.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” she finds herself breathing back. Karen wrenches open the door and steps out into a bright — nearly blinding — morning. The van sways as Rachel does the same from the driver’s seat.

Kathy joins Karen on the cement as they both wait for Rachel to round the van and join them. There’s another creak and thud from the rear doors. Karen cranes her neck and watches Rachel pull their three packs out. Kathy waves her hand towards Rachel, gestures for Karen to follow.

Rachel swings Kathy’s bag through the air and the shorter woman catches it against her chest with a huff. Then she offers Karen her own. “We can clean up in the hall,” she explains.

Karen holds her pack to her middle and pauses, a frown inching across her face as she turns to look back at the van, with its doors closed on Frank inside. She notices, blinking, that the front windows have been rolled down.

Rachel’s response to her wordless question is level and quiet: “Give him a minute.”

 

* * *

 

A minute turns into almost a full day. 

The manager of the V.F.W. Hall is a sharp-featured older man, with richly lined brown skin and a shock of close-cropped white curls. He introduces himself as Howe, taking the three of them in with a raised eyebrow and broad smile framed by a diligently kept, dark goatee. Minutes later they’re monopolizing the hall’s bathroom to get dressed, with Howe’s blessing.

After a childhood spent playing basketball, Karen has little shame changing in front of other women. She keeps her eyes trained low, but doesn’t bother retreating into one of the stalls. Neither do Rachel and Kathy — though the latter turns her back to the mirror.

Karen finds herself digging deep in her pack for the lone sundress she’s brought along — a flowy, lightweight thing, black with a print of tiny red and gold flowers. It’s old, her last growth spurt rendering the cap-sleeves just shy of too tight against her shoulders while the skirt barely reaches mid-thigh. It’s something she wouldn’t mind getting trashed on tour. She pulls on her heels, too; finds herself comforted by the familiar armor of femininity on such a strange day.

She leaves her phone propped open on the counter, volume muted, as she does what she can to tame her sleep-wild hair with her fingers, glancing surreptitiously at the live feed unfolding on the small screen. She feels sick. 

“Turn it off,” Rachel says, dragging Karen’s thoughts away from the gathering crowds. Her eyes are the color of steel, her hair pulled back into a bun; baby hairs frame her face in red, just-the-wrong-side-of-greasy tendrils.

At Karen’s confusion, Rachel continues, “We can’t do shit here. Check-in in a few hours. You’re just going to make yourself useless staring at it.” 

Karen swallows, a stone of malaise still caught in her throat, but she nods and does as Rachel says. “I just —” she starts, only to abort the sentence when she finds it has no direction; that it’s just as listless as she is.

Luckily, her loss for words is swallowed up by the sound of aerosol spray. Karen and Rachel turn at the interruption: Kathy, now dressed in what Karen has come to understand as her virtual uniform for tour — cut up tank-top, shredded denim shorts, and boots — spraying something into her hair, clump by clump.

Kathy latches onto Karen’s rattled expression like a trained targeting system. There’s a tense beat of silence before Kathy says, sounding more harshly amused than angry, “What? I know how to use dry shampoo. I’m not a goddamn animal.”

Her attention pings from Kathy’s hair (which does, Karen notes, look much cleaner, newly freed from the two braids the bassist’s kept it in since the first day of tour) to Rachel’s greasy bun. It draws a bark of laughter from Karen. Leatherneck still surprises her.

Rachel snorts and rolls her eyes, reaching out to flick the back of Kathy’s head. “Shithead,” she mutters, her tone inescapably fond.

“All you gotta do is ask, Sarge,” Kathy retorts, shaking the canister in her hand in Rachel’s direction before swinging her attention back on Karen. “Rach’s fuckin’ right though. Take a night off following us around with that fucking camera,” Kathy says. “Work the merch. You’ve seen the zines. Talk to people, get them pissed. Let ‘em know being chickenshit doesn’t work.”

Frank’s voice, in her head: _Pissed off beats scared every time._ Karen nods.

 

* * *

 

 

The Defenders arrive mid-afternoon, while Karen, Rachel, and Kathy are camped out at a table — dragged outside after helping Howe break down the half space from dining area to show floor. They’re trying to catch the breeze off the lake, desperate for a respite from the heat. 

“Hey, Karen, hey,” Danny says, walking a couple steps ahead of Matt as they both approach. He slides into the seat, minimoog tucked under his arm — into the seat recently vacated by Rachel, who’s checking out the system before The Defenders’ scheduled soundcheck. 

(Karen tries not to dwell on the fact that Frank hasn’t appeared; that it’s usually _his_ job to stand behind the front of house sound tech with his features locked in a scowl or something unsettlingly stoic, depending.)

“Oh, cool, lunch,” Danny continues, neglecting to wait for acknowledgement or ask permission before diving into the Chinese they’d ordered. “Are these pork?”

“No,” Matt answers, pulling to a stop beside the table. For a moment, Karen thinks he’s scolding Danny. She’s a little impressed, before he adds, pointing to another takeout box with the hand not gripping his cane, “these.”

Both Kathy and Karen blink up at Matt, perplexed. 

“The fuck, Murdock?” Kathy says, her ire pivoting rapidly from Danny — who has now begun to pilfer pork bao from the box _right in front of her_ — and onto Matt.

Equally curious, Karen watches the tips of Matt’s ears go pink and then red, practically matching the tint of the silver-framed glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. “Uh, smell,” he mumbles. He reaches up to rub the back of his neck. Karen feels, briefly, an impulse to mirror the gesture.

“Huh,” Kathy grunts. She reclines, bracing one boot against the table as she swings her chair forcefully backwards, balancing it on its two back legs. She stares at Matt hard as she does, calm eyes divulging nothing, before rocking the chair forward again. The front legs hit the sidewalk with a jolt, Kathy snapping her arm out to pull the takeout away from Danny. “Either pay up or order your own, Timberlake.”

Karen has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at the surprise that worms its way across Danny’s face, as if he’s shocked to be denied something. His pork-thieving hand is still suspended mid-air.

They’re saved by Rachel’s sudden reappearance in the propped open door of the hall. Her slate gaze finds the boys first: Danny colonizing her chair, Matt standing at his side. “Rand, Murdock, you’ve got soundcheck in ten.” They don’t hold her attention for long; she turns to Karen and Kathy. “We gotta get Micro and the old man.”

Karen catches Matt’s brow furrowing when Rachel says _the old man_ ; his auburn eyebrows dipping behind the frames of his glasses, the twist of his mouth as he tries to decipher the words. Pride sparks in Karen’s chest; she speaks a language not everyone has access to.

Danny nods, swallowing his last bite of stolen food and wiping one hand over his chest. A smear of grease appears on his t-shirt. Karen winces, and watches him stand, saying, “Mhmm, yeah, Matt?”

Matt mumbles an affirmative and sidesteps to allow Danny the room to step away from the table. They shuffle past Rachel and into the venue. Karen can hear Jessica’s muffled shouting as they enter.

Kathy shoves the pork container across the table toward Rachel with one hand, holding up her own food with the other. She angles her head back, tapping the base of the container as she tilts the remaining contents into her mouth.

It doesn’t occur to Karen to lament Kathy’s manners as she stands up from her seat, attention on Rachel — who picks her carton up from the table.

Rachel’s jaw tics, once, before she speaks. “Did that fucker eat my dinner?”

A breeze tickles the tip of Karen’s nose. She scratches at it idly, laughter hidden in her palm.

 

* * *

 

When the three of them reach the van, Micro is leaning against the open rear passenger door. They have their orange-tinted glasses pushed up into their hair, holding it out of their face; their head bowed deep in conversation with Frank. 

Frank, who is sitting on the very edge of the step into the van. His knees are spread wide, elbows — cloaked in the sleeves of his hoodie — balanced on them as he hunches forward. The hood is drawn up over his head, shielding his face. But Karen can tell from the angle of his neck that Frank’s barely looking up at Micro.

He’s been withdrawn today, radiating ‘fuck off’ vibes with clarity since Karen had opened her eyes for the second time that morning — a morning which seems surreal, now, the moments leading up to the news about Virginia imbued with a dreamlike quality: blue light before dawn bleeding into the gold of a risen sun; the chime of Micro’s phone cutting through the chugging rush of wheels pushing seventy on the highway (a sound that, since she was small, has made Karen imagine she’s sleeping on an overnight train bound for a strange and distant country); Frank exhaling white smoke into the bleary dark; and later, shifting against her side when she finally snapped awake.

Karen doesn’t know what to do, exactly, with his withdrawal from the band’s daily maneuvers. Her ever-helpful racing thoughts suggest — ad nauseam — that it’s something to do with their conversation the day before; that she’s done something wrong by dredging up memories of Maria (his _dead fiancée_ that he _didn’t_ _tell her about_ ). But it’s not exactly like Kathy or Rachel are the type she can ask.

Micro is the first to clock their return to the van. Their serious expression shatters when their eyes lock on Karen, cherubic face breaking out into a grin that Karen’s _missed_ , after less than twenty-four hours without. It’s probably silly, she thinks, but it’s the first time today that Karen feels like things might be returning to normal.

“Holy shit,” Micro breathes, as Karen slows to a stop beside the van. Their eyes spark, a cloudless sky blue. “You’re my hero,” Micro expounds, looking down at her feet briefly before giving her an honest to god _bow_ , complete with one hand pressed against their middle, the other reaching out. “I _salute_ you. Heels. On tour. My femme icon.”

Karen’s already blushing, scuffing the dark gray toes of her pumps against the asphalt as Frank’s head jerks up at Micro’s words. Kathy bark-laughs. 

There’s a thread of confusion in his heavy brow, reaching down into the twist of his mouth. Frank’s eyes — no amber in them, just dark, dark brown under the shadow of his hood — dart from her heels to her dress and up to Karen’s face. Disorientation melts into amusement, his features almost inverting as the tension gathered in them releases outward. His brows shift back from the nexus of his nose; left side of his mouth turning up in a lopsided grin.

“Heh.” Frank’s voice is heavy from the day’s silence.

Something slots back into place in Karen’s chest. She returns his chuckle with a mock-haughty air, lifts one eyebrow and says, “Didn’t believe me when I said I’d packed them?”

Frank ducks his head, mutters, “Guess not,” before he chuckles again; a light sound shot through with weary surprise, like he’s laughing despite himself.

It’s been a long day, and they’re not done by far. The sensation of having snapped Frank out of a dark place, if only a little, sits bright on Karen’s shoulder.

But he’s pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes shut tight against the falling sun. Karen feels her smile go threadbare, and watches a resigned anger edge back into Frank’s shoulders. Still, when he looks up at her again his crows feet are gathered in a telegraphed smile.

He hauls himself up out of the van, taking a step towards Karen and swinging the side door shut behind him. His gaze seems to skitter back and forth across Karen’s face for a moment before he turns away. Rachel murmurs something to Micro. Karen resists the urge to smooth a hand over her hair.  

 

* * *

 

Karen is speaking with a concertgoer at Leatherneck’s merch table when she finds out someone has died. 

James — he’d introduced himself as their conversation lingered; Karen complimenting his _Indigenous resistance is ceremony_ t-shirt, him picking up a zine titled _THIS IS THE MUTANT REVOLUTION: a trans manifesto_ — shows her his phone and says, “Fuck.”

A woman’s face stares up at Karen. The photo next to her, a car and a tumult of bodies. Karen feels sick. Blood roars in her ears, drowning out the clamor of the venue around them, a restless crowd waiting for the main act — for Leatherneck’s arrival.

She hands James back his phone and tries to swallow the knot of furious, horror-struck grief in her throat. The look in his dark eyes — framed by long, shining black hair that hangs loose around his face — says more than Karen could fit in a news brief.

Her hands itch. For a pen, for her camera, for —

The venue goes dark. Whatever inadequate response Karen was about to offer is devoured by the thrill that runs through the crowd, a viscerally _human_ response to a sudden descent into darkness: either hold your breath, or scream. Most opt for the latter. The effect is all the more unsettling, following close on the heels of what James has just shown her.

Karen’s stomach clenches, stress held in her body flaring into full alarm in the dark. The lights are supposed to be kept on until Frank gives the order, in the bridge of “i am going to kill the president of the united states of america.” For a moment, Karen’s logic fails her; the anxiety coiled around the base of her spine blossoming outward. _What if they —_

A low, deep sound. Rhythmic. Immense. One that manages to at once magnify and deafen every other noise. The crowd quiets. The cadence reveals itself.

 _Thump. Thump. Thump._ Each beat has a distinctly metallic clang to it. Recognition dawns in Karen’s senses as a bass note carves its way under the starting rhythm, a weight that sinks right into the floor of the venue, vibrating the bones in the crowd’s feet. Karen doesn’t need to see to know that everyone on the floor is standing still.

She remembers the shock of this song.

Rachel joins in, her guitar an eerie whine which sneaks into the sonic infrastructure Frank and Kathy have begun to build, like a ghost passing through walls erected long after its death. The arrangement is new, a variation on the one Karen was first treated to months ago at The Safehouse. She wants to know when they orchestrated the change, how they came to the decision. What she was doing when it happened.

But the thought is superficial, barely registers. Driven away completely when Frank growls into the wide dark, _“There is a Great Beast loose in the world of men.”_

Karen braces herself for the impact; the moment when Leatherneck will tear its teeth into one brutal note and the show will begin. She grips the edge of the merch table.

It doesn’t come.

Instead, the song transmutes again, another secret evolution. Frank’s steady beat cuts out with another deep growl, the second half of his warning in the opening lyric. _“And today, we feed the Beast.”_ Karen notes his labored breathing, the dying ember of a snarl caught deep in his throat before his voice vanishes under a barrage of machine gun drums: a blisteringly fast _ratratratratratratrat_ ; a frigate of sound that impacts with darkness and explodes into chaos and light.

Frank bellows as the room bursts to life: _“PUNK AIN’T NO RELIGIOUS CULT.”_

House lights burn overheard in the same moment the crowd erupts before Karen’s eyes.

Her new friend joins in as Frank leans over the edge of the stage, microphone in hand, already detached from its stand; its cord wrapped loosely around his wrist. _“PUNK MEANS THINKING FOR YOURSELF!”_

James shoots Karen a broad grin and a two-fingered salute before running forward, long legs eating up the few empty feet of space near the merch tables and the (closed) bar before leaping into the crowd. Frank continues rampaging through the first verse.

The crowd catches James easily and Karen watches, rooted to the floor in amazement as he raises a fist straight into the air and the crowd shouts — at least two other bodies flying up from the floor into their hands as they do — “ _NAZI PUNKS —_ FUCK OFF _!_ ”

The day’s anger and despair burns in Karen’s chest. But the music — Rachel and Kathy’s guitar and bass racing not to fall behind Micro’s breakneck drums, Frank and the crowd’s savage affirmation; their point blank disavowal of fascists in their spaces. It reaches deep inside her, slicing right through her sternum, and wraps around the flame in her chest before lobbing it out, out into the crowd. A roman candle built from determination and fear and shimmering rage, gathering light from the two hundred or so people rolling on the venue floor. 

James, who has made his way to the front, is smiling. And so, Karen realizes, are the two others who have been lifted by the crowd. One is eased down at the back, near the merch tables; they’re still shouting the lyrics in time with Frank, and before Karen can get a proper look at them, they turn around and barrel straight back into the mass of bodies with a juggernaut’s momentum.

Her attention shifts as she loses track of the kid in the pit, zeroing back in on Leatherneck.

Micro’s drumsticks are virtually a blur; the _BANG!_ on their kick drum coming alive with the flex and bend of the relentless pace. Their face is turned out to the crowd. Dimples form deep rivets in their round cheeks — smiling as they, too, join in on the next chorus: “ _NAZI PUNKS_ — FUCK OFF _!_ ”

Kathy and Rachel stalk to the centerstage, closely flanking Frank. Karen watches, transfixed, as Frank leans back, his roar falling into the background to make way for the two women snarling: _“Ten guys jump one — whatta man!”_ Their voices are comically high on the last two words, adopting a sardonic, hyper-feminine twist.

Their three heads — Frank’s buzzed scalp, Rachel’s emergency exit tangles, and Kathy’s dark, unkempt quasi-mullet — press together as they shout, _“You fight each other, the police state wins!”_  

They step back from one another. Frank turns, face momentarily hidden — but Kathy and Rachel are grinning wildly, their expressions matching Micro’s, the crowd’s. Karen feels herself mirroring them.

Her camera is in her bag, under the merch table. She digs it out. DSLR, this time around — she doesn’t have the time to accommodate for film. Something is happening, _right now_. Something amazing. There’s _joy_ here, amid the cacophony, the slam of bodies. And she needs to get it down, capture whatever she can of this strange alchemy of jubilation and anger; hope and violence.

Karen turns the camera on and kicks off her heels simultaneously, knowing she won’t make it through the crowd to get close to the band. But she doesn’t want the camera focused on them, anyway.

Luckily, the back of the hall is near empty, with everyone throwing themselves into the fray in the pit. Jessica Jones and Luke Cage are ‘working’ The Defenders’ merch table (Matt and Danny had gone to check into their hotel room, their first of the tour), but both of them are more focused on what’s happening between Leatherneck and the crowd.

Karen bolts to the hall’s bar, where the property manager is posted, observing. She waves for his attention. “You mind?” she shouts, voice straining to be heard over the set, and points to the bar.

His brow furrows and Karen glances over her shoulder, chewing her lip as the crowd breaks into another chorus. She doesn’t have the time. Fuck it.

Karen climbs on top of the bar — grateful her mother always reminded her to wear cycling shorts under her skirts — and focuses her lens.

 

* * *

 

“You missed quite a show, Murdock,” Jessica Jones says as she climbs out of The Defenders’ van. The red light of the parking lot turns her black hair into an oil slick, illuminating threads of purple. “Page here scaled the bar." 

Karen’s face heats. She swallows. She’s currently sitting outside Leatherneck’s room with her laptop perched on her knees, SD card poking out of the drive; settled into her work. Jessica’s voice had startled her.

Her attention whips from the newly-arrived van to the entrance of the room next to Leatherneck’s. Matt Murdock stands in its doorway — his auburn hair damp, curling around his ears and dripping onto the red lenses of his glasses. He’s changed out from his uniform of skinny jeans and battered t-shirts advertising four-year-old albums to a stained, plain gray t-shirt clearly intended for sleep, and sweatpants with elastic at the ankles; the kind Karen associates with grandparents.

“Really?” he asks. His voice is creaky as an old house. Karen heard it fall out from under him during their set earlier; had winced with sympathy, but listening to it now is somehow worse. Closer, smaller, and absent the distortion of guitar and synth to help ease his shattered voice into her ears. 

She avoids Jessica’s quickly-approaching gaze by casting her eyes downward, and notices Matt’s only in socks; that his beyond broken-in Converse are missing.

“It wasn’t, like, a thing,” Karen says, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. It’s late, but the show’s left her with a frenzied energy; a song’s hook in her step, Micro’s drum fills pulsing in her blood.

She’s still sweaty, too, the breeze coming off the lake doing little to cleanse her of the venue’s heat. She’s tired, her calves ache, her hands are cramping as she tries to remember where the hell she saved her Photoshop actions. And she’s _awake_ , mind churning as it tries to pinpoint the precise moment that the fear in the room — in _her_ — burned away.

When Leatherneck first arrived at the motel — before Danny had even left to pick up Jessica and Luke — Karen had dragged their room’s sad, broken down armchair out to the walkway, not ready to let go of the night (or keep anyone up with the glow of her laptop while she edits photos). It’d been peaceful, with only the moths for company. 

“Sounds like it was a thing,” Matt replies, grasping one handed for the doorframe. Once he finds it, he braces his shoulder against the weary wood. Matt’s head tilts when he speaks, and Karen watches his lips twist into a smirk.

“Trish’s mini-me is hardcore,” Luke adds, joining Jessica on the sidewalk by Karen. Discomfort continues its slow crawl up her spine.

Jessica starts talking before Karen can figure a way to respond to what she’s sure was a well-meaning if backhanded compliment. “Trish is a radio personality,” Jess starts, crossing her arms and jerking her chin down at Karen. The corner of her red-lined mouth twitches — apparently the closest thing to a proper smile Jessica has to offer — and finishes, “Page here’s a kung-fu master.” 

Karen’s face burns. “I —”

“Did somebody say kung-fu?” Danny Rand slams the driver’s side door of The Defenders’ van shut. The whites of his eyes look almost paranormal in the limited light offered by a motel parking lot at two A.M.; red-orange glow reaching through the dark, landing on what it can. “I’ve studied —” 

“Sweet —” Luke starts. 

“— Christ,” Jessica finishes. “ _No_. No one is talking about kung-fu.”

Danny’s face falls as he reaches the group. “But you said Karen —”

“No I didn’t,” Jessica cuts him off.

Karen watches the ensuing silent battle: Jessica, arms crossed and single eyebrow raised; Danny with his kicked puppy look that only serves to make him look like a child about to throw a tantrum in Target.

Luke meets Karen’s eyes when she looks to him. He shrugs, hands stuffed in the pockets of his hoodie.

“Is it always like this?” she asks, emboldened. She supposes, if she’s going to be the subject of a wordless argument between two members of The Defenders without a chance to contribute her own damn thoughts, she might as well gather some insight from the other two.

Luke chuckles. “You have no idea.”

“Try riding with us,” Matt says. When Karen turns to look at him, he’s still got that smile on his face; something between a grin and a smirk, heavy on the latter.

“Oh shut up Murdock, you don’t even have to listen to most of his crap,” Jessica retorts, returning to the main conversation. Karen’s chest locks up at Jessica’s tone — a little too heated to comfortably live in the realm of _friendly teasing_.

“You _could_ get better earplugs,” Matt croaks, seemingly unfazed.

“My music and guided meditations are not crap!” Danny half-shouts. His pouting child look has downgraded into an outright scowl. “I’m trying to bring a little zen to the van.”

Jessica scoffs. “Zen?” she echoes. Her eyebrows raise; one corner of her mouth — still impeccably lipsticked a deep red, even at two in the morning — lifts in a snarl. “It’s _zen_ to remind us that our actions are meaningless and the universe doesn’t give a shit about us?”

Matt stiffens beside Karen. She watches him tug on the collar of his t-shirt with one hand, fingers of the other fidgeting at his side. _Huh_. She files those detail away, fuel for a later line of questioning.  

“It’s not about insignificance. It’s about _stillness_ ,” Danny insists, sounding more petulant by the second.

“Oh, r _iiii_ ght.” Jessica rolls her eyes.

“Karen,” Luke interjects, sudden and pointed. Karen straightens in her seat, eyes frozen wide; her pulse seeming to reverberate in the back of her throat at being singled out unexpectedly.

It appears to have the same effect on everyone else. The bickering stops, three sets of eyes shift to Karen’s face. She keeps her hands poised on her keyboard, skin crawling.

“You want some help cleaning up?” Luke asks, once his bandmates have shut up. He jerks his head toward Karen’s seat; her camera bag open at her feet, hard drive balanced on the chair’s arm and the laptop itself on her knees. She may not be as familiar with The Defenders’ signals as she is Leatherneck’s, but the subtext is clear: _Don’t write about this._

Karen snaps her laptop shut. “Uh, no,” she manages, shifting aside her belongings before standing up. “I’ve got it.”

Luke shoots Jessica and Danny a nod, and Karen watches the exchange with rising ire: Jessica rolling her eyes at Luke, but shrugging in agreement nevertheless; Danny looking confused until Jessica jerks her head towards their room, frustration blowing her eyes wide as she gestures forward with her hand.

(There’s a quality to Jessica’s expression that Karen recognizes; she’s made the same face herself, the one that says _let’s go, genius_. She used to give her brother that look.)

Luke asks Matt to step aside, exasperation dragging his voice to its lowest register. Karen watches The Defenders file into their room for the night. Jessica bids her goodnight with a no-nonsense _See you in the morning, Page_ , before snapping the door shut behind her.

Alone again, the night seems louder; her own breath, trace amounts of gravel grinding against the sidewalk under her feet, the chirp and chatter of bugs in the grass beneath the motel’s _VACANCY_ sign warring with the hum of neon. Karen looks back down at her makeshift workstation and sighs, instantly regretting moving the chair out of the room when she looks to Leatherneck’s drawn curtains.

It takes her longer than she’d like to admit to move the armchair back into the room by herself, as quietly as possible. By the time she manages it, Karen’s beat and sweating, the lycra cycling shorts beneath her dress itching against her thighs.

She surveys the room, barely washed in the bleeding glow of the parking lot which sneaks out from behind the corners of cheap curtains. She stands at the foot of the two beds — Micro and Rachel on one, Frank on the other, and Kathy M.I.A., as Karen’s determined to be usual. Micro’s limbs are strewn wide over the bed they share with Rachel. Actually, Karen realizes, once her eyes adjust to the darkness, their limbs are even spread over _Rachel_ — one leg hooked over her calves while she sleeps on her stomach.

Frank is on his bed, gathered to one side (the sleep, Karen recognizes — thinking of the narrow bed in his apartment, with its hospital corners — of someone accustomed to a twin). He’s turned on his side, left arm folded across his chest, hand gripping the edge of the mattress as if he’d fall off should he let go. The other arm is stretched upward, his head pillowed on a hunched shoulder and his hand dangling off the edge of the bed. Karen has to resist a childish urge to tiptoe over and slip his arm back onto the mattress; maybe pull up the blanket that’s gathered around his bare waist, effectively hiding the tattoo on his left hip that she still can’t quite make out. Keep Frank’s fingers safe from creatures under the bed.

She makes herself look away. The fabric of her sundress clings to the small of her back. She plucks at it uselessly, the overhead fan doing nothing for the sticky heat that permeates the room. Karen turns her attention to her backpack — tucked alongside Micro’s duffel and Kathy’s rucksack at the foot of Rachel and Micro’s bed — and decides, defeated, that it’ll be less obtrusive if she abandons the idea of sleeping in her pajamas for the night. 

She sighs. At the very least she can slip into the bathroom and wash her face. 

Careful to turn the light on only once the door has clicked shut behind her, she turns away from the switch. When light floods the dingy, off-white bathroom, Karen bites her tongue hard enough to draw blood, to keep from screaming.

“ _Jesus_ , Legs, what the fuck?!” Kathy hisses. She’s in the tub. Karen blinks.

Kathy _is in the bathtub_ , stripped down to her underwear (a black lace bra paired with cottony, teal boy shorts — both of which Karen suddenly feels like she was never supposed to see, despite having changed in front of Kathy earlier in the day). She jerks her earbuds out with one hand, her sleep mask pushed up over her eyebrows.

“I —” Karen starts. Her thoughts stall: Kathy. Bathtub. Sleeping? She’s flushing, hard; desperate to look anywhere other than at Kathy. Something about so much exposed skin on display in the garish light of an unclean motel bathroom. Karen averts her eyes, thinking of the opening scene in _Alien_. When she catches sight of herself in the bathroom mirror, her face is the color of underripe tomato.

“You ever learn how to knock?” Kathy huffs, pulling her sleep mask further up her forehead. “For fuck’s sake, Legs,” she says, starting to push up out of the dry tub. “You need the shitter? All you had to do was ask.”

Brain still stopping and starting, Karen shakes her head, quick. “No, no, no,” the words rush out of her. She lifts her hands in surrender. “I didn’t — uhm. Mean. I…I’ll just —” There’s a dry stone in Karen’s throat which seems to absorb her words and thoughts, turning them to chalk and coating her lungs. She swallows around it and shakes her head once more. “G-go,” she finishes with a gulp, and turns tail, forgetting to shut off the light as she leaves. 

She nearly stumbles into the dresser that’s pressed against the far wall of the room, across from the beds. Her hands reach out reflexively, wrapping around the chipped fake wood. “Shit,” she mutters to herself, exhausted thoughts skipping over the last twenty-four hours in an attempt to find _consistency_ ; some shred of normalcy on which to moor herself.

Karen doesn’t catch the thread.

And for a moment, it makes her so angry she wants to shout, to stamp her foot and demand to go _home_. To admit defeat. To admit — to what she’s sure will be Kathy’s delight — that she can’t handle this. She misses routine, her own rhythms; the familiarity of waking up in her own bed, going to work, going to The Safehouse on Friday nights —

The last thought cuts her temper off at the knees. When did _that_ become routine? When did she start to associate safety, amity, with —

Karen shakes her head again. No. She won’t drop down that rabbit hole; not right now. She swallows. Her nails scratch the laminate on the dresser — smoothed over pegboard to make it look like wood. She can handle this. She has to. A bad night isn’t going to beat her. She’s not going to prove every comment, every skeptical eyebrow raise or scoff or smug fucking sideways glance right.

She takes a deep breath and ignores the fact that her bra is starting to itch, worn too long on a hot day, before turning around and facing the two beds.

In the time it’s taken Karen to have a close encounter with Kathy and subsequently compose herself, Micro has flipped onto their stomach, as well as taken the pillow Karen thinks is supposed to be hers and pulled it tight against their side. Rachel has her head burrowed under Micro’s pillow. Karen sighs.

Frank remains folded neatly onto one side of his mattress, unmoving save for a small twitch in his fingers. Dreaming, maybe.

Well. If Kathy isn’t going to claim her spot on the second bed, Karen will. Fuck this.

 

* * *

 

She’s there when he wakes up. 

It’s a slight pressure against Frank’s ribs that doesn’t even register until he attempts to roll over and finds the curve of Karen’s back obstructing his path. He swallows a grunt and stills, mid-roll.

The sun is newly — barely — risen, changing the light filtering in through the curtains from blue to a gradation of black and grey. Details of the motel room become clearer each minute as morning unfolds outside.

The blanket is pulled up over Frank’s stomach, instead of gathered around his waist as usual. The edge of it curves up from his chest to drape over Karen’s shoulder. It looks near to slipping off her, the pull of the fabric between their bodies taut enough to allow Frank to see under the sheet.

He glances down at where a few inches of Karen’s spine meet his bare side, a point of warmth — with only the thin material of her sundress between them, he can actually feel Karen’s body heat, this time.

(She’s also curled up almost dead center of the mattress. Frank braces a hand against the side table as he negotiates sitting up, suddenly aware of how easily he could tumble right off the edge.) 

He sits up slowly, easing the tension in the sheet as he does in an effort not to jostle Karen any more than he has to. It’s the first free day of tour; no show scheduled, no errands to run. They don’t need to be on the road for several hours, and waking her up just ‘cause his mind and body are averse to shutting down for more than five hours at a time seems like a prick move.

He takes in his surroundings.

There are no voices coming through the thin walls, no doors opening and shutting. No tires on the concrete outside, or birds singing, or water rushing in the bathroom sink. Frank sits up carefully, bending one knee (the one farthest from Karen, to avoid shifting the blankets too much) slightly off the mattress; he rests his elbow on it and scrubs a hand groggily over his face, ducking his head to smooth a palm over his buzzcut. The thing’s starting to grow out; a couple more days and it’ll need to be taken care of.

The bundle of Karen under the blankets is pressed against Frank’s hip, now. He sits still and listens.

For the first few seconds it’s like listening to the air move, it’s so goddamn quiet. Then Frank adjusts, the barest suggestion of sound buffeting his ears: the low slough of fabric as Micro stretches in their sleep, the tap of blinds against glass (so brief and quiet Frank might have imagined it simply by virtue of glancing at the window). Karen’s breathing is high and long, steady, even with her face half crushed to the mattress.

 _Directly_ to the mattress. She isn’t using a pillow. Frank blinks down at her, then huffs into his chest.

He can hear his own pulse, a tapping from under the floorboards of his sternum. The faint whistle of air through his fucked up nose, a rasp that never quite goes away. By comparison, Karen’s breath sounds clean, uninjured.

Finally, Frank lifts the blanket off his lower half and pivots — cautiously — on the mattress, swinging his bare feet to the carpet. There’s more than enough light to navigate the shadowed room by now. He stands and rounds the foot of the bed to where he’d draped his hoodie over his ruck, putting it on without bothering to zip it shut.

Patting the pockets in search of his smokes is practically a reflex as he pads across the cheap carpet towards the door.

It clicks shut behind him. The sidewalk is cool and hard against the soles of his feet, scraping a little when he flexes his toes, and the click of his lighter is loud in the early morning hush. Frank takes a deep drag — when he lowers the cigarette from his lips, he turns his hand over to inspect the back. The four waning moon cuts between his knuckles. They don’t ache anymore. Frank drops the hand to his side.

The air is balanced on a knife’s edge between the coolness of recent dark and the balmy heat of a summer dawn. He takes a deep breath, stares at the cherry of his cigarette for a long moment before tipping his head back to watch the sky.

 

* * *

 

In Rochester, they fuck up.

Four songs into the set – _I got enough ammo but I should have prayed for more guts_ tearing from Frank’s throat – he sees the pit shift. The tangle of bodies transforms faster than any of them can track from the stage, the push and pull suddenly all pull. The heart of the crowd gains speed; their boots wear circles into the waxed hardwood. 

She’s impossibly small. Frank only notices her once her ponytail (dirty blond, ends dyed kool-aid pink) flies up as she’s caught in the current of the whirlpool pit. Her eyes — a spooked fawn’s eyes, wide and still — lock on his in the split second just after the running starts. A sharp moment of surprise, frozen onto her face, before the crowd drags her with it. 

She’s a goddamn _kid_.

He’s already stepping onto the floor monitors, a signal for Rachel and Kathy to find a place in the song and stretch it out, let him open his goddamn eyes.

Rachel finds it and tears at the air with sound; her guitar becomes hungry, predatory. Kathy joins Frank on the monitors and Frank jerks his head towards where he’d seen the girl go down.

It’s then he sees another flash of blonde in the crowd: golden flax, a fairytale color. Her hair is down – because _Christ_ , that woman seems to be on a goddamn mission to prove some shit – and it falls in her face as she crests through the ring of the circle pit, cradling her camera high in one hand, the other arm locking around the fallen girl’s shoulders. The stream of bodies nearly knocks Karen off balance, too; Frank sways forward, gritting his teeth. Then watches her pull through it. 

Karen slides them both to the front of the crowd, positioning the kid so she’s braced against the monitors on Kathy’s corner of the stage. Karen looks up searchingly, meets Frank’s eyes, and nods, setting her elbows down on either side of the kid — who’s at least a foot shorter than Karen and sporting a mean bruise on the side of her face.

Frank’s legs tense, ready to launch into the goddamn pit himself.

But the kid is fucking _beaming_ , already flipping her ponytail in Karen’s face as she settles into the rhythm of Rachel’s razor sharp guitar.

The hall they’re playing is dimly lit; even the stage lights are weak. But Karen’s eyes are still an arresting blue when they catch on Frank’s. _It’s okay_ , she mouths over the kid’s head.

Her attention is pulled away as Kathy stoops down and lifts her hand for a high-five from the kid. She uses the proximity to take Karen’s camera from her, setting it on top of her amp and turning to flash the girl a proud grin — met by the girl’s smile becoming all the brighter, bouncing up and down against the stage edge. 

Frank’s lips curve infinitesimally upward. Rachel steps into his peripheral and waits for the okay. He signals for Micro to start the next song. 

The crash of their cymbals leads the band into “Your Friends Are Full of Shit." When a crowd surfer emerges from the whirl of bodies — a liberty-spiked motherfucker he recognizes as one of the architects of the stampede that took the girl down — Frank sends them flying back into the pit far away from Karen and the kid. If the assholes struggle to catch their friend’s weight hurtling toward them at high velocity, Frank doesn’t give a shit.

When the set ends and the crowd begins to migrate towards the back of the hall – either to buy merch or step out into the night and make their journeys home – Frank shoves the mic back into its stand a little too forcefully, his priority on the girl chatting with Karen by the stage. 

He makes eye contact with Kathy before entering her space. She gives him a curt nod and falls back towards Micro and Rachel, already packing up for the night. 

“Hey,” Frank says, sinking into a crouch before easing himself offstage. He makes eye contact with the kid first, insides still seething when his gaze skirts over the rapidly darkening bruise on her face, reaching from jawbone to eyebrow. “S’a real shiner you got there,” he says when she catches him staring, quiet for a beat too long. “You okay?” 

She nods, pink Fun Dip ponytail bouncing. “Uh-huh,” she replies, reaching up with two fingers to prod at the bruise. 

The gesture is familiar; youthful and proud, shot through with reverence for a mark well-earned, pain well-endured. Frank recognizes it from coming home after school with bruised knuckles, leaving some prick who deserved it looking far worse. 

(He remembers the first time he took out someone’s teeth — a jock piece of shit a grade ahead of him, parroting his old man’s racist bullshit in the cafeteria. Expulsion had been a close thing. Throughout the whole ordeal, the only thing Frank could bring himself to regret was the look on his mother’s face.)

The girl winces and Frank clenches his jaw, before her expression shifts into a shy smile. Frank feels his mouth twitch in turn.

“What’s your name, kid?”

She blinks owlishly. Frank ducks his head a little to one side, waits.

“Galina.” Her voice tilts up, makes the name a question.

Frank nods. “Galina.” He offers his hand, eyes flicking down when she takes it; his calluses and bruised, tattooed knuckles make her hand look almost comically delicate by comparison, chipped nail polish (cotton candy pink, matched to her hair) and all. He meets her eyes and smiles. She’s got a strong handshake. “I’m Frank.”

Her smile widens and she looks between him and Karen; wispy bangs falling in her eyes, against the bruise on her cheek. Galina’s gaze is direct — her eyes remind Frank a little of Rachel’s, only with a touch more blue diffused throughout the stone-gray. They’re older than the rest of her face.

“Really thought I was going to lose a tooth,” she continues, surprisingly nonchalant for how young she looks, the baby fat still in her cheeks. Frank would peg her to be fourteen, tops. “Happened to a friend of mine last month.” Her voice is accented; stiffly Eastern European, soft and high-pitched. 

Frank huffs; wants to know why the fuck the shows are rough enough for a kid to lose a fucking tooth; if anyone around here is enforcing some goddamn rules of engagement.

“Thank you for pulling me out,” she says to Karen. “This was my, uhm. First American show. The circle…” she whirls her finger, mimicking the motion of the pit. “We do not do that back home.” 

“Where are you from?” Frank asks; too curious not to, now. From the expression on Karen’s face, she’s been chomping at the bit to do the same.

“Oh! My father has been stationed in Berlin since I was a baby,” Galina explains. “But he is in the states now, so I go to shows here.”

Well. Frank’s used to vets at shows – folks from Second Lives turn up all the goddamn time. He thinks Rogers and Barnes must bus them out to the Kitchen; others, too – but a vet’s _kid_. That’s a new one.

“Yeah?” he asks, unable to keep the surprised laugh out of his voice. “What you think? Compared to Berlin.”

She flashes a toothy grin. “ _Very_ good.”

That makes Karen laugh, brief and light.

Galina clutches one arm against her front with her opposite hand and nods up at him, Karen smiling at her side. “How long are you staying? Will you play another show?”

Frank holds both hands to his sternum, massaging the palm of his right. He shakes his head. “Heading out tonight.”

The disappointment on her face draws another low huff from Frank’s chest. He seizes the moment to survey the emptying venue. “You got someone coming for you?”

“My father will pick me up soon. He does not, ah, like me coming to shows like this so much.” Galina swallows. “But he, you know. Wants me to be safe. He will come.”

Frank does not think about what he would and would not allow, if he were a father.

“He’ll probably like it less now, huh?” His eyes flick over her bruise again; the swelling just pronounced enough to encroach on her right eye. It won’t be swollen shut, not by a long shot. But her round face, her big eyes, one small hand idly twisting the hem of her black t-shirt. It all conspires to make it look worse than it is.

Galina rubs at her nose. “Probably not. He says doing this kind of thing,” she gestures around the venue, “for fun is crazy.”

Frank scoffs and braces a hand against the stage edge. “If it sounds crazy, you weren’t crazy enough to begin with.”

She blinks up at him and _giggles_ , and something coiled tight in Frank’s gut loosens. She’s gonna be just fine.

“Sometimes crazy is good,” Galina says.

“That’s it,” Frank answers. He can feel Karen’s eyes on his face, catches her head dipping in his periphery. But he keeps looking at Galina. “Hey, thanks for coming out, yeah?”

Galina _beams_ — bright-eyed, gap between her front teeth. It makes her look young in a way that feels alien to Frank, unaccustomed to kids this young coming out to shows. He’s unprepared.

“Thank you,” she echoes, nodding up at him. “For the crazy.” A dry laugh creaks out of Frank’s throat; he ducks his head as she continues, lifting her phone (teal case vivid even in the low light). “Before you leave…could I take a selfie with you?”

Selfie. 

Frank blinks.

Behind him there’s a short burst of snickering: Kathy and Micro, doing a piss-poor job of downplaying their delight (Micro burying laughter in their palm, Kathy turning her head away, shoulders quaking).

Frank’s gaze reaches over Galina’s shoulder to Karen. Her front teeth are pressed into the generous swell of her bottom lip as she tries and fails to corral her smile into submission. She’s looking right at him, blue eyes shining.

But she doesn’t tolerate Frank’s faltering pause for long. She glances pointedly at Galina, tilts her head; telegraphs with absolute clarity that he’d be a prick for saying no.

“Ah, yeah, sure,” he responds, weight shifting on his feet. A small tension seems to release in her body, excitement rippling outward from wherever she’d tried to pack it away. “Uh. Karen, you wanna…?”

But Galina shakes her head. “No, I will just —” a few taps on the small screen in her hands, thumbs working so quickly Frank feels bewildered all over again. Then she lifts the phone up and steps directly against his chest. “Like this.”

Frank’s ugly mug scowls down at him from the girl’s raised screen. _Christ_. In the low light Galina’s bruises are barely visible, but Frank’s ever-shifting array of minor injuries stand out in sharp contrast.

“On three?” Galina is so slight against him, her shoulder blades poking his sternum. Frank takes a small step back, ducks his head down beside hers to compensate for the distance he’s created before grunting an affirmative. 

The phone starts a countdown, a series of dull mechanical beeps. He can’t quite manage the combination of muscle commands to smile; instead, he points at Galina, referencing her own grin as if to cosign her excitement.

Before Karen, Frank hadn’t had his picture taken in years. It wasn’t by design. Shit just never came up. But as Galina looks down at her screen, smile brightening all the more once she’s decided she’s satisfied with the outcome, Frank can’t stop a frisson of paranoia from tapping at the back of his neck, or the undercurrent of confusion that comes with it: _What the_ fuck _does a teenage girl want with his picture?_

He’s getting old, maybe.

“Thank you,” she says again, once the photo is saved, sliding her phone into the pocket of her shorts and spinning back around to face him.

“You got it,” he says, flashing her a thumbs up for good measure. Suddenly, ridiculously, Frank is hesitant to meet her eyes. He steps back, angles his shoulders away to signal his impending exit. “Take care, sweetheart.”

He tacks on the endearment without thinking. Galina stares. For a second, Frank worries that was a bit much.

Then the kid fucking hugs him, promising that, yes, she will take care; maybe learn to stake out a monitor like his friend. It happens so fast his body freezes; arms slightly raised, caught halfway between surprise and reflexively hugging her back. And with that, she’s gone, practically bouncing out the door. 

He blinks at Karen. She doesn’t say a word.

Her expression pulls a terse grunt from Frank’s chest as he tamps down the urge to tell her to shut the fuck up.

 

* * *

 

Karen’s sitting sideways on the middle bench of Leatherneck’s van one morning in Buffalo, her legs hanging out the open side door while she uses her phone’s data — precious, expensive data that she’s billing Trish for — to post the first ‘official’ update from the road for _AltPress_. It’s just as she’s hitting ‘publish’ that Danny Rand appears over her laptop, Jessica Jones in tow looking bored.

“Karen!” Danny’s greeting is, per usual, overly loud — considering it’s before eleven and Karen’s only coffee of the day came at six A.M., two miles outside of Rochester, from the sketchiest gas station she has ever seen.

Frank — who’s been napping fitfully on the bench behind her — grunts at the intrusion.

“Hey, Danny,” Karen says, snapping her laptop shut. She leans forward, forearms braced against the still-hot surface of the device, and meets his too-perky gaze. “What can I do for you?”

Danny grins. He’s sporting the same unkempt facial hair as the rest of his male bandmates. His stubble a shade pronouncedly darker than his now obviously bottle-blonde curls. Karen bites back a laugh.

“Jess and I were going to get some coffee and wanted to know if you…” Danny trails off just as Karen watches his eyes shift from her face, sliding up over her shoulder. “…wanted to, uh. Come?”

The back bench of the van creaks ever so slightly as Frank leans forward behind Karen and replies, “Yeah.”

Behind Danny, Jessica doesn’t attempt to hide a spiteful cackle as Danny nods, a little twitchily. “Yeah. Great. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he continues to nod through his words, counteracting the deer-in-the-headlights look in his eyes by affecting a casual air so contrived that a note of pity plinks in Karen’s chest.

She still has to tuck her chin down and swallow the laughter gathering in her throat — not so much at Danny’s petrified expression, but at the sheer _Kathiness_ of Frank rising like punk rock Dracula from the backseat to terrify Danny in the first place. She manages to keep her amusement to herself and nods. “Yeah, that sounds great,” she answers. (She’s not lying; it does. She’s been feeling their late nights and early mornings routine hard today.)

“Give me a second to get my stuff put away?” Karen adds when Danny — seemingly at a loss for what to do next — doesn’t back away from the open door of the van. Frank’s still leaning over the back of the bench, breath tickling Karen’s neck.

Danny’s eyes widen comically further. His ears, barely poking out from beneath a mop of sandy curls and brown roots, turn pink. “Right, uh, yeah, of course,” he says, treading backwards towards Jessica — who seems to make a small effort to curb her laughter when Danny stops beside her.

Karen slides her laptop back into her bag (tucked under the bench, for quick access) and looks back at Frank. “Coffee?” She knows well enough now that he doesn’t drink coffee on tour; there’s enough sachets of green tea stashed in nearly every corner of the van to prove it.

His expression is alert, rich brown eyes flashing copper in the summer morning light. His hair growth has become suddenly noticeable, shaggy tendrils of dark brunette beginning to break free of the sharp lines of his buzzcut, sticky with sweat. From the toss of it, Karen would guess he’s been fucking with it — the way the few strands of gray over the initial bullet scar stand up slightly, as though Frank’s been scratching at them.

She loses the beginning of whatever Frank says in her study. “—‘sides, it’s the ritual, yeah? Placebo effect.” His inflection on _placebo_ elongates the last syllable, his voice having become strikingly more rough-hewn on tour. Karen figures it’s due to a combination of increased use and no easing up on his tobacco intake. A sympathetic tickle piques the back of her own throat. 

They both pile out of the van — Kathy, Micro, and Rachel are exploring the town on their own this morning, and Karen knows it’s silly to worry, but she sends Micro a text informing them that she and Frank are going out anyway — and join Jessica and Danny.

Buffalo is busy, even this early. There’s a plethora of motels, all advertising their proximity to Niagara Falls and other attractions. So when they make their way to the nearest coffeeshop — a Starbucks, which both Jessica and Frank scoff at when Danny holds the door open — it’s no surprise to find it full, the line twisting around the café teeming with families. They’re instantly met with the clamor of screaming children and the conciliatory, threadbare voices of their under-caffeinated parents.

“Christ,” Jessica mutters. “I would’ve stolen Murdock’s headphones if I knew we were going to fuckin’ Disneyland.”

“Hey,” Karen starts. Jessica’s eyes find hers; there’s a beat of hardness there, before she seems to catch Karen’s smirk. Karen continues, “That’s unfair to Disneyland.”

Jessica snorts and Karen offers a commiserative smile. She’s never had the patience for small children. While Karen’s classmates in elementary school read _The Babysitter’s Club_ and played house, she read _Nancy Drew_ and _Hardy Boys_ and solved fantastical murder cases in her backyard, with Kevin in tow as her trusty sidekick.

“I think children are very wise,” Danny says as the line shuffles forward. “They’re very honest with their emotions.”

Both Jessica and Karen’s answering scoffs tangle up with Frank’s muttered, “ _Chrissakes_.”

Eventually, they order their drinks. Karen’s hot coffee (black, because she has self-respect) and Frank’s tea come out immediately, the harried barista behind the counter having plenty of time to prepare the hot drinks while Danny attempts to order.

His first request — something called a _cherry blossom frappuccino_ — is vehemently denied, when their barista (a girl who looks barely older than Karen herself, but infinitely more exhausted, her small mouth set in an unmoving frown of frustration) informs Danny that they have not had that drink in over a year.

His second attempt — _matcha, whisked_ — is, again, rejected. When Danny opens his mouth to try for a third, Frank grunts pointedly behind him and makes knowing eye contact with the barista.

“I’ll, uh — just grab a…” Danny trails off, ducking under Karen and Jessica to fish a bottled beverage out of the case to their left. He sets it on the counter. “One of these.” His face is bright pink.

Jessica orders an uncut cold brew and shoves ten dollars in the tip jar. The barista gives Jess a relieved smile and instructs them to wait at the end of the counter.

The crowd at the end is thick; when she peers over the counter, Karen winces in sympathy, taking in the trail of cups on the bar that reach up and over the divider between the drink prep area and the register. The snap of steam wands being pulled and released, and the near-constant ring of timers, ovens, and espresso machines mix with the customers’ chatter. Karen lets herself zone out a little amid the babel.   

Then, out of the din, voices raise.

“Sir,” their barista intones, having now wandered away from the register to where the crowd awaiting their drinks has gathered. She projects her voice as best she can, in order to be heard. “You cannot speak to other customers in the café like that.”

“ _Really_?” comes the bellowed reply. The guy is tall, his dirty blonde hair shaved down on the sides of his head. He shoves his way through the knot of bodies to get closer to the barista, just a few feet away from Karen.

The girl’s mouth spreads thin. Her chin bobs as she swallows. Karen can’t quite see her eyes. “Yes,” she says, sounding more tired than angry; but calm, professional. “Really. If you continue to curse at customers I will have to ask you to leave.”

Karen feels both Jessica and Frank stiffen beside her. She shouldn’t be able to, considering the level of noise and how fast it happens, but she’s pretty sure she hears Jessica crack her neck. Frank sets his tea on the counter beside them.

The man scoffs, his profile twisted by ire; ugly and red. “ _I’m_ a customer, bitch. You need a goddamn man in here, fix your fucking attitude.”

“OK. Yep, you need to leave,” the barista says — the cool quickly leaving her voice as it inches higher, anxiety wedged between the syllables. “There’s no reason to use that kind of language here.”

“Fucking cun—”

Jessica lurches forward, but stops short as Frank barrels through the crowd towards the man — who’s in the process of stepping behind the bar, into the barista’s space, his hand raised. Before Karen can so much as open her mouth, Frank has the asshole by the collar of his shirt, yanking him back just as he swings his hand out towards the girl.

He misses her. Instead, Frank brings the guy down to the floor, crowd parting like the Red Sea around them. People begin to shout and gasp — shocked into reacting for the first time since the exchange between the barista and the prick began — as Frank slams one closed fist into the man’s nose, other hand letting go of his shirt collar to grip his neck.

The guy — who’s taller than Frank, but not as broad — reaches out, tries to hit back. He swings one open hand wildly, briefly wrapping it around Frank’s chin. Karen gasps, swaying forward as she sees blood well where his nails dig into Frank’s cheek. But Frank quickly uses the hand not pinning the man down to swat his fingers away, a low growl loosed from his throat when he does.

“Enough,” Frank grunts when the asshole switches tactics, trying to wrap one flailing hand around Frank’s wrist and pull it off his own throat. 

There’s shouting, a kid crying — Karen hears someone on the phone: _Hello? There’s a fight at the Starbucks on —_

“She said _go_ ,” Frank says, guttural, rearing back and pulling the struggling man off the floor by his shirtfront. His bloodstained collar sags from the strain Frank’s just put on it. “Didn’t your father ever teach you not to hurt a woman?” Frank growls, the rage in his voice warring with a note of disbelief. He pushes the man a few steps back from the bar.

The man manages a glare despite his shaky stance, rattled and bleeding. Contempt and resentment spark in his pale eyes. He sniffs through the blood crusting his nose and upper lip and spits in Frank’s face.

Frank closes his eyes, but doesn’t let go. When he opens them again, that dead look returns — the same one Karen saw when he pulled the skinhead’s knife from his arm. The back of her throat ices over. Danny gasps beside her. 

“Fuck _you_ ,” the prick says. “I’m going to have you _arrested_ , you fucking psycho! I’m getting my coffee from this goddamn cunt, let me fucking _go_.” He attempts to work himself free from Frank’s grip on his shirt, to walk around him. 

It doesn’t work.

Frank jabs — a blur of bruised knuckles and ink. It pops against the man’s temple with a surprisingly hollow sound; his eyes are still open, but dazed, unfocused. He sways forward. Frank catches him, scooping him up onto his right shoulder, and walks him out the front doors. The crowd splits easily for him, a path framed by expressions of shock and fear, silent save for the sound of a child crying and the low, ambient drone of smooth jazz.

The glass door rattles when Frank slams it shut behind him.

Karen is the first to recover. “Come on,” she hisses to Jessica and Danny, leading them out after Frank in a jog. Her heart slams against her chest — the void look in Frank’s eyes; Frank’s hand around the back of a skinhead’s skull, their face a bloody ruin and Frank moving to slam it into the cement again, _again_ — they have to leave. Now.

But once they’re outside, Karen stops in her tracks a few feet away from where Frank’s holding the asshole at the end of the block. Frank swings him off his shoulder, propping him against the building; leaves him sitting like a rag doll on the sidewalk: his legs splayed across the concrete, back pressed to brick and head lolling against his chest.

“Well, shit,” Jessica says, finally. “You do that with one punch?”

Frank huffs, standing upright and peering down the sidewalk at the three of them. His chest is heaving. There’s blood on his face, his hands. Karen hasn’t quite gotten her breath back. Frank’s eyes land on hers and he blinks, slowly refocusing.

Before there’s a chance to say anything else, however, the doors of the Starbucks rattle once more. It’s their barista, a drink in each hand. Her mouth is tilted up in a tiny, apologetic expression caught somewhere between a grimace and a smile.

“Here,” she says, approaching Karen, Jessica, and Danny. She holds out the iced cup to Jessica. _Her drink_ , Karen realizes with a start. That’s why they’d been at the end of the bar. The details, the reason for their outing — all of it had flown out of her head the second Frank took the prick to the floor.

Behind her, Frank’s heavy, uneven footfalls approach. She can hear the deep rattle of his breath before he steps into the space between her and Danny.

“Thanks,” their barista says, handing Frank the tea he’d left behind and producing a small stack of rumpled napkins from her apron pocket, which she also hands over. Karen watches her eyes shift nervously from the fresh scratches on his cheek, to the now well-molded yellow and brown bruises from the stage diver he’d head-butted in Albany, then down to the where fresh bruises are forming on his knuckles, layered over the old. Karen’s own marks on Frank’s right hand are scabbed over, now just bare brown flecks between his fingers.

Frank grunts absently in reply, uses one of the napkins to dab at the scratch marks on his cheek. 

The girl’s bottom lip folds into her teeth. “Uh. People usually don’t do anything when stuff like that happens.” This she adds quietly, as if speaking to herself.

Frank, Jessica, and Karen’s faces sour in unison. The barista chuckles. “Yeah, my wife feels the same way,” she offers. Karen watches her swallow thickly, a nervous bob in her throat that makes her eyes lose focus for a moment before she pushes forward. “Still, uh. Thanks. Sorry, but… I have to tell you to never come back — it’s messed up, I know,” she adds, when their expressions shift once more (Frank, for his part, seems to expect the dismissal, nodding as the barista speaks).

A siren approaches from a few blocks away. Danny shifts, visibly anxious, his expression the kind of _uh-oh, busted_ Karen’s accustomed to seeing on high schoolers’ faces at the parties her roommate used to drag her to, freshman year of college.

The barista glances over her shoulder. “You should probably go? But I — thank you.” She jerks her head towards the guy down the block: still sitting, barely conscious, where Frank set him down. “I’ll deal with this.”

“Fair enough,” Frank says, finally. He sips his tea, hand wrapped around the top of the cup as if to funnel the steam into his nostrils.

Karen gives the girl a smile — she’s not entirely sure if she intends it to be an apology; maybe an expression of sympathy, or gratitude. But it feels like the right thing to do. 

“Sign up for some self-defense classes,” Jessica adds, as Frank makes an about-face and starts walking.

The girl chuckles quietly. “Maybe I will,” she says. “Seems worth it right now.” 

Jessica nods; as Karen turns, she catches the quick quirk of Jessica’s red lips. “It is.” Then she joins Karen and Frank in their steady march away. 

Behind them, Karen hears Danny — sounding uncharacteristically tactful — say, “Thank you. You shouldn’t have to put up with that.”

The girl laughs him off, the rest of her response swallowed by another batch of sirens; closer, this time. But Karen does catch Danny continuing, “Hey — uh, we’re playing a show tonight, at uh… Ballszy? You should come.”

That’s more like it. Karen finds herself shaking her head in silent laughter as Danny jogs to catch up with them, Frank making a sharp turn and leading them down a side street just as the sirens reach the Starbucks behind them.

 

* * *

 

“Wait a minute,” Micro says when they all meet up at a rusty spoon near their motel for lunch before the show. “You got coffee without me?” 

Frank looks up from his food, burger barely pulled away from his mouth. He scowls across the table from Micro, from his seat beside Karen. “You were getting your nails done,” he grunts around a mouthful of food.

Micro — whose nails _are_ a fresh, beautiful oil slick color, luminescent under the diner lights — frowns. “But _coffee_. Pastries. Local roasteries.”

Kathy snorts. “They were at a _Starbucks_ , Chippy. You wouldn’t’ve set foot in the joint.”

Micro rolls their eyes, apparently, by their estimation, stating the obvious: “Well if I had been there we wouldn’t have _gone_ to Starbucks.” 

A chuckle bursts out of Karen like a held breath. “That’s what you’re upset about?” she blurts. The absurdity is so —

Familiar. Comforting in a way that doesn’t feel real. Of _course_ Micro is upset that they weren’t invited on the coffee run while they were getting a fucking manicure and Rachel and Kathy were — judging by the hot pink paint in Kathy’s hair and the lime green spattered thick on Rachel’s shoulder — playing _paintball_.

The four of them turning to look at her in unison only makes it funnier. Karen laughs again, a heated boldness unfurling under her diaphragm. She raises an eyebrow. “What?” she asks, gaze pinging from Micro across from Frank, to Rachel beside them, to Kathy sat at the head of the table, and finally Frank next to her. “I assumed you’d be more upset about the guy who tried to _attack the barista._ ”

Kathy’s surprise turns warmly acidic. Micro’s confusion relents, their face spreading in a delighted grin as both Rachel and Frank turn back to their plates, chuckling. Frank takes another large bite of his burger, shaking his head as he does. The fine lines around his eyes deepen, amusement held entirely in the upper region of his face. Karen wishes she was sitting across from him, where she could see more clearly the way his laughter bakes the topsoil color of his irises. 

“Alright,” he says, after taking a bite — but before swallowing. He’s a callous eater; someone who has clearly decided that maintaining the table manners Karen’s sure his Catholic mother at least attempted to school into him as a child is a moot point. She likes that about him, if she’s being honest.

“Don’t forget that… that kid —” Danny Rand’s name has also been deemed low priority, something Karen thinks might be a more deliberate forgetfulness than that which informs Frank’s appalling table manners, “invited the girl to the show, after alla that.”

“No,” Micro gasp-giggles. “He didn’t.” Their words are punctuated by Kathy’s shrill cackle.

Karen nods, takes a pull from her water and swallows. “Mhm,” she affirms. “He did.”

“Jesus Christ,” Kathy says, shaking her head. She looks to Frank. “I always thought Spector was fucking dumb, but this little fuck —” 

Frank leans forward, reaches across the table for the ketchup, near where Rachel’s sitting against the window across from Karen. Karen notices it a beat too late: that Frank’s stiff, his movements not as free as they usually are.

Rachel notices too, a handful of seconds before Karen does. She’s already handing the bottle to him as he says, “Hey,” fingers outstretched in an unspoken question towards the ketchup.

When he leans back in his seat, Frank tilts his head slightly away from them all, frowning as he attempts to roll his right shoulder. His frown deepens, pulling slightly at the fresh nail marks in his cheek. Karen hears him grunt softly under his breath and her heart skips in concern. Did he hurt himself, flipping that asshole around? That was two hours ago. How had she not noticed? She should have —

“You want to stop by the room and get the brace?” Rachel asks. There’s something resigned in her tone. It’s only when she speaks that Karen realizes how quiet the table has gone.

Still, in the beat before Frank answers, Karen’s mind churns. _The brace_ . A mosaic of memories forms in her mind’s eye: Joan, that wisp of a woman, baking brownies — edibles. Frank explaining, _Got a bad shoulder and a bum knee._ Him forgetting the brownies at The Safehouse and Joan turning up at his apartment to make sure he got them.

Frank scoffs, harsh enough to jerk Karen from her thoughts. He reaches up and presses a hand to his shoulder as he rolls it again. “Don’t need that shit,” he murmurs.

There’s a look shared between Kathy and Micro, one that seems as weathered as a well-loved pair of boots. The slow upturn of their mouths paired with a practiced eye-roll. Then they both look down at their plates, caught somewhere between amused and annoyed. Kathy adheres closer to the latter, while Karen catches a flash of outright concern on Micro’s face before their expression shutters.

Karen’s attention turns to Rachel.

Rachel doesn’t break eye contact with Frank, digging her heels into a silent conversation Karen can only guess at. Karen chews the inside of her cheek and stabs her fork into the chicken salad she’d ordered — courtesy of a sudden, acute craving for vegetables; for food that came from the _ground_ after days of greasy, processed road fare.

Frank ends their wordless exchange with another grunt, reaching up with his uninjured arm to scratch at the notch near his hairline, marking where the bullet had pierced his skull. Karen’s distracted by the light from the window, tossing itself against the threads of gray there. 

Then Rachel catches her staring. Karen averts her gaze and pulls out her phone; busies herself with an email from Trish concerning the photos she’d sent over early that morning.

 

* * *

  

After lunch, she and Frank _do_ end up at the motel. Their first stop had been the venue, Rachel and Frank aiming to get their gear unloaded and brief whoever had charge of the soundboard, ensure they’re equipped to handle Matt’s IEMs; if not, to give a rudimentary (and surly) crash course in them.

It’s something Karen hadn’t intended to pick up on, but ever since the first night of tour she’d noticed Frank initiating discrete conversations with the front of house staff at each venue. And how, regardless of the size — whether it be a proper bar and stage, a V.F.W. Hall, or what appears to be someone’s _house_ , like tonight — there’s never been an issue with Matt’s monitors.

She thinks Matt would throw a fit if he knew; she thinks Frank would throw one if anyone told. Karen reminds herself to try and needle more information about Frank from Claire, in the future.

Once that business is finished, however, Frank marches over to Karen across the basement. She’s sitting on the narrow steps, fussing with some sketches of hers she’d scanned with her phone. The scanner isn’t bad, but it certainly hates white balance, so she has to clean them up in PhotoShop. She hears the uneven shuffle of his boots against the cool cement floor before she sees him.

It’s a scorcher today; high humidity despite the fact that they’re sitting on the Canadian border. Karen’s in her black sundress again, washed in a truck stop bathroom with a bar of soap Kathy had handed to her before they left Syracuse. She’s in her Converse again, too, heels returned safely to her pack.

Frank’s elected to beat the heat by shedding his hoodie, opting instead for one of his cut up t-shirts-turned-tank-tops. This one is a military green so faded it encroaches on pastel, threaded with small clusters of holes at the collar and hem; the screen printed design worn down, leaving the shadow of the letters _USMC_ high on the left side of his chest, beneath the ghost of the eagle, globe and anchor.  

The deep slashes on the sides of the shirt fold as he moves, revealing and concealing the dark tattoo on his left hip. The same one Karen had glimpsed in the motel, nights before. She catches a flash of ochre gold ink when he comes to a stop in front of her.

“You up for a drive?” he asks. His hands hang at his sides; Karen watches his fingers tap the air in their _one-two, one-two_ cadence before she realizes he’s asking her to give him a ride.

“Uh, yeah,” she breathes, blinking back into focus, forcing her gaze away from his hands and up to his face. She barely remembers to press ‘save’ before she closes her laptop. “Sure.” 

Frank sways a little; his answering nod disrupts his rhythm slightly — head moving forward and back as his shoulders rock from left to right. A symphony in discord. “… Okay,” he says, head bobbing again, glancing down at the floor.

When Karen stands, he pulls the keys from the back pocket of his dark wash jeans and offers them to her. The jingle of metal brings Micro’s head up from where they’re assembling their kit in the stage area — which Karen realizes isn’t raised off the floor. She makes a mental note for later. They wave goodbye as Karen and Frank troop up the stairs.

 

* * *

 

It’s the heavy thud of a cabinet being kicked that forces Karen’s hand. She’s been trying to mind her own business, since they got back to the motel; busy herself with her phone or her notebook amid the sudden starts and stops of the electric buzz she hears through the closed bathroom door. Tries to let Frank do his thing, despite the way her anxiety whips itself up from her stomach into her throat.

The rest of Leatherneck, Karen’s learned, seems to have a default policy of how to deal with an upset Frank: leave him be, wait it out. It’s not exactly something Karen received a guidebook for.

But when she hears him start to thunder around the bathroom, she decides that whatever the hell sort of code Leatherneck has with one another doesn’t apply to her, and she doesn’t _like_ doing nothing.

(Frank’s tired, wan voice in Lou’s, what feels like years ago — giving her what Karen imagines is as close as Frank gets to a pep talk: _If you can handle yourself then stay put and_ do _it._ )

“Frank?” Karen asks, rapping on the door. The wood shudders under her fist; weak, as if it’s hollow in the middle.

He doesn’t respond. She hears a clatter and a low, indiscernible sound that could be Frank’s voice or just her imagination.

“Frank,” she repeats, “if you don’t answer me, I’m coming in.”

He grunts then, unmistakeable; Karen decides that’s not an actual answer. She opens the door.

On the counter, against the mirror as though it had been chucked across the formica, sits a pair of clippers. Frank’s left hand is curled around the countertop, gripping the edge tight enough to turn the skin of his knuckles white. The contusions on his hand are so dark they blur with the inked letters they intersect. His right hand is lain flat against the dull yellow surface of the counter, index finger working an agitated rhythm against a chip in the finish. A few dark clumps of hair have landed on the counter and in the sink.

Beside the sink his tank top lies neatly folded. Karen swallows, eyes skittering over Frank’s naked back; the few faded bruises and more than a few scars. Her attention slides to the mirror.

Frank’s head is bowed; she can barely see his eyes, let alone the rest of his face. His progress at shearing his hair is so minute, she can’t even make it out on his scalp. He frowns at the vanity instead of frowning at himself.

There’s a razor, too, carefully set by the handle of the faucet; clearly untouched, unlike the clippers. Karen notes the creep of five o’clock shadow from the underside of his jaw.

There’s an almost delirious moment when she thinks — _Huh. Does facial hair really follow a schedule?_

In her study she notices, slowly, that Frank’s arm is shaking, following the same rhythm as his tapping finger; a tremor reaching all the way up into his right shoulder that sets his William Blake tattoo shuddering. It makes his entire right side seem fragile, Frank’s often tenuous command of his own body slipping.

He doesn’t even lift his head at the sound of Karen’s entry. Something twists and tumbles in her chest with that; almost sadness, almost anger — but not directed at him.

“Hey,” she says, finally. Low and clear.

Frank’s head jerks up; turns over his shoulder towards her. He grunts again. His eyes seem darker in the orange-yellow tint of cheap motel lighting. 

Karen’s gaze doesn’t hold his. It slips back unconsciously to the clippers on the counter. She used to cut Kevin’s hair; her mother had taught her, and when Kevin had decided he could no longer bear the sheer _uncoolness_ of getting haircuts from his mom, Karen took over.

She looks back at Frank. Chews her bottom lip.

Her chest lifts up and down; she pulls in as much air as she can, then releases it slowly. Drags her tongue against the roof of her mouth before she speaks. “Sit,” she says. Karen gestures to the closed toilet. 

Frank’s answering frown ignites her resolve. She takes another step, moving out of the doorframe and into the bathroom. Her rubber-soled Converse squeak against linoleum. “Sit,” she repeats, jerking her head towards the toilet again as she walks forward. One more step before she grabs the clippers off the counter. “Let me.”

Frank’s still holding onto the countertop, but his grip loosens. The muscles of his back shift as he stares at her for a long moment. Then his head drops, bouncing a little — like the invisible string holding it up has been cut. He stands to his full height, turns to face her head on.

His dark eyes move steadily from the floor, to the clippers in her hand, to her face, a movement so gradual she can see the gears in his head turning; the way his gaze narrows but his mouth relaxes out of the hard line in which its been set. His lips part a fraction of an inch. A rattling exhale, bare chest deflating. Karen keeps her eyes on his face, but tracks the imposing skull on his sternum rising and falling with each breath.

Frank steps sideways and drops down onto the lid of the seat, his knees spread wide, a space for Karen to slip into. 

She readjusts the clippers — winding the extra cord around her forearm — and fits herself into the space between Frank’s thighs. The fabric of her sundress is aged paper thin. She can feel his breath against her stomach, skin prickling with the sensation. Frank tilts his head up to look at her.

From above, there is something improbably delicate about his features. A dusting of freckles across his shoulders, faint enough that she’d never have picked them out amid his deepening tan were she not standing so close. The way Frank’s ears stick out, toeing the line between average and silly. A bruise Karen hadn’t noticed around the curve of one, from a blow to the side of his head days ago, judging by the greenish tinge. Surprisingly, the color pulls out the amber hue of his eyes; small flecks of a lighter, redder brown nestled in their rich topsoil color. His eyelashes, always longer and fuller than she expects.

The dotted line of scabs that curve like a sick smile around one cheek, from this morning.

Before she can quell the urge, Karen’s hand reaches out. Her palm cups the underside of Frank’s chin; the rough stubble there tickles her heart line. Frank rocks back slightly, a flinch so minute the tips of her fingers never quite break contact with his skin. She feels a puff of warm air against her thumb as he exhales, settles into her touch.

He has an odd look on his face; at once watchful and resigned. Skepticism tempered by trust. The pads of Karen’s fingers find their purchase against the arc of fresh scabs, smoothing over them in sympathy.

Frank’s skin is _warm_ , furnace-in-winter warm, against hers. The steady breeze of his breath reaching out and pressing against Karen’s middle. She can feel the micro shifts in the muscles of his face as he breathes in, out, in.

Her self control has always been compromised by affection; cursed with an impossible-to-soothe urge to touch, to make a tactile claim.

 _Oh_.

Karen recoils; drops her hand away the instant the thought crashes into her. Her fingers press to her mouth; the salt of her own sweat thrilling against the chewed raw flesh of her bottom lip. Her face burns. Her chest feels tight — not enough air, and her heart swelling too large with each furious beat.

“Sorry,” she mutters, desperately trying to rein in her bucking, incoherent thoughts ( _Frank_ the subject of each one.) The room is too small and Frank is too close and Karen is _aware_.

Her only sensible thought is just as frantic: stop the onslaught of her own foolishness, get it together. She forces herself to swallow, applies every trick she rejected from the court-appointed therapist to bring herself down, down, down.

She silently counts to ten and then back to one. Times her breathing.

“Okay,” she says, unsure if she’s speaking to Frank or to herself.

It’s just a haircut. Between friends. She can handle this. She’s lived through worse. Karen won’t let herself be bowled over by a _crush_ . A crush on her subject. ( _Your friend_ , a voice corrects. _Shut up_ , Karen thinks.)

She moves her free hand to his bare shoulder, allows it to settle into the curved muscle, thumb pressing against the joint where his neck and shoulder meet. But careful not to press too hard, unsure of how tender the spot is, how far-reaching the injury. Karen swallows, then inhales. Makes herself meet Frank’s eyes — brown, rich, still curious.

Using her hand on his shoulder to steady herself, she leans forward and brings the clippers close, switching them on with her thumb.

 

* * *

 

Her touch is feather-light and cool on his skin. She’s resting the heel of one hand and the pad of her thumb against his shoulder, the rest of her fingers raised, reducing the points of contact as much as possible — like she’s trying not to overstep her bounds. It’s careful enough to make Frank hyper-aware of the movements of his own body. Her inner wrist bumps the shell of his ear. He hears Karen inhale before the buzz of the razor crowds out every other sound. 

It’s been a shit day. The realization that his hair is too goddamn long had dawned that morning, Frank reflexively scratching at his forehead before he was even properly awake. He’d tried to push it away; to pack up the sensation as small as it could be and funnel it all the way to the back of his skull. It worked, for a while. 

Then he got into a fight and the prick’s fingers just barely managed to gain purchase, a brief twist of his nails against the bit of length at the crown of Frank’s head. Frank shook him off quick enough, but spent the next several hours cashing out the feeling of phantom digits tugging at his scalp; navigating an itch around the shocks of gray hair and knotted skin that bookend the right side of his skull.

Add to that the steadily building strain in his shoulder and by late afternoon, Frank is at the end of his goddamn rope. He asked Karen to drive him back to the motel because he could feel his skin wearing thin in the wake of a pain too sharp to be justified by the circumstances: a beer-gutted pissant who couldn’t keep his shit to himself in a fucking _Starbucks_. Stupid. 

It was a short, silent drive, Karen’s hands laid diligently at ten and two on the wheel while Frank concentrated on breathing through a rising tide of discomfort and frayed nerves, rubbing uselessly at his shoulder. On the list of things inside himself Frank would like to take hold of and rip out, the mess of scar tissue, worn cartilage and poorly healed bone in his right shoulder doesn’t even make the top three. But right then — due onstage in a few hours, Karen in the seat beside him — part of him would have rather cut his fucking arm off than deal with it.

Back in the shitty, yellow-lit motel bathroom, Frank’d made a mental list of what to do: clean up his hair, shove the ache that twists through the muscle of his shoulder somewhere he doesn’t have to stare it down head on. Calm the fuck down. Get on with it.

Only, when he’d taken the clippers in hand and moved to raise his right arm up, the coiled pain in his shoulder just retracted further into itself: a hard, miserable knot of refusal. Frank could barely raise his elbow up six inches from his side, let alone over his shoulder to reach his scalp. When he’d forced it, a guttural sound had gathered in his throat; one he’d barely managed to bite down on.

His self control has always been compromised by weakness; a voice in his head hissing at him to suck it up and _keep moving_ , not make his shit someone else’s problem.

But that’s one thing and Karen is another. Frank doesn’t know the first thing he’d do to keep her away from the door.

So the buzz of the clippers encircles his skull and he closes his eyes, leans into the white noise. The last thing in his head before he screws his eyes shut: a red and gold flower stitched into black fabric, shifting in time with Karen’s breath. Even this close, he feels no heat from her, only the negligible pressure of her thumb against the joint of his neck, the brush of her calf against his knee. 

Pain spreads down his arm like invasive vines growing; reaching through muscle and bone bearing flowers that only bloom into more pain, varied and unpredictable. An ache so pure it might be a comfort, if this were a different time. But Frank has spent years moving past the place where he counted pain as his sole tether. He can’t invite it in, anymore. Cannot. Will not.

The clippers are a welcome enough sensation against his scalp that Frank has to concentrate on staying still, avoid leaning into the pressure. Karen brushes a tuft of fallen hair from the shell of his ear, then off his shoulder, her fingers cool against Frank’s bare skin. A shiver travels across his shoulders, down into his chest. He takes a deep breath in through his nose, tries to will the remaining tremor from his hands — the left laid open-palmed against his knee, the right cradled against his stomach. 

Karen makes rhythmic passes over his scalp, reaching a little farther back each time. With his eyes closed, Frank’s world narrows to the buzz and pulse of the clippers and the movement of Karen’s hands. 

That is, until she just barely bumps the shell of his other ear with the clippers and the buzz gives way to abrupt quiet. Frank opens his eyes.

“Fuck, sorry,” Karen says, voice thin, just too loud to be a whisper.

Frank adjusts in his seat, lid creaking under him as he brushes a lock of hair from his kneecap. It tumbles to the floor; he watches, gaze trailing downward and fixing on the freckle just above the knob of Karen’s right ankle, low on her inner calf. “You’re doing fine,” he murmurs.

Karen drags her fingers through her hair. The movement pulls Frank’s attention upward.

She’s slightly backlit by the yellow bulb over the sink, face clearly visible but shadowed. Frank blinks up at her as she takes a step back, out from between Frank’s legs, grasping the clippers in both hands. 

“Could you, um,” she starts, tilting her head and staring, “turn around? I’m almost done.”

Frank stills.

Her eyes are dark blue, robbed of any real light to reflect in the dingy motel bathroom. There’s a quality to her expression he can’t pin down, like a held breath; but he can see her breathing, the rise and fall of her unexpectedly broad shoulders pulling thin, black fabric taut across her clavicles.

He waits a beat, eyes searching hers. Then he turns, faces away from her without leaving the seat. The sensation of baring his back to someone burns in his gut, a tension slipping back into his shoulders. Frank breathes through it.

The squeak of Karen’s Converse over the linoleum floor signals her approach. Frank finds he’s bracing himself, all but flinching when her hand finds his shoulder again. The electric buzz clicks back to life and Frank closes his eyes again, tries to climb back into that quiet place. The clippers drag over the very back of his skull, the nape of his neck.

It’s not long before it’s finished.

“Okay,” Karen says.

Frank hoists himself to a standing position, brushing stray hairs from his chest and neck. When he turns to face her, Karen isn’t looking at him, busy winding the cord round the body of the clippers, setting them next to the sink. He steps up beside her. Karen flits a questioning glance his direction as he leans in front of the mirror, raising his good arm and rubbing a palm over his freshly shorn scalp. _Thank fuck._

“Thank you,” he offers, meeting Karen’s eyes in the mirror. 

She nods and smiles, close-mouthed and troubled in a way Frank is too tired to try and unravel. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m just… gonna shower, real quick. And we can head back.” 

“Okay.”

He nods, turns toward the meager shower stall. Expects Karen to make her exit.

She doesn’t.

“Frank?”

“Yeah?”

Karen chews on her lip a moment, brow furrowing. “You’ve got a show tonight.” 

Frank grunts. “No shit.”

“Your shoulder —”

“It’s fine.” Frank cuts her off. Even he can’t deny he sounds like a brat. Karen huffs. Frank doesn’t look at her.

When she speaks again, her voice seems to tiptoe around him in a way that makes the steel go out of his shoulders. “Does the brace help?”

Frank sighs. 

Of course it fucking helps. He’d first gotten it about six years back, the mess of compounded injuries in his right shoulder too much to be ignored. Frank’d opted for an orthotic over surgery. He’s a grown up — he knows, intellectually, that it’s nothing to be embarrassed about; that he’d be an asshole to push his body closer to the edge just to prove something. And just because he’s stubborn doesn’t mean he’s stupid. 

He can’t go onstage tonight without it. He knows it. It’s everyone keeping an eagle eye on him about it that gets under his skin.

Frank looks at Karen’s face, reminds himself that pity and concern aren’t the same thing.

He doesn’t answer her. Instead, he grabs his folded tank top off the bathroom counter, steps into the motel room proper, digs the brace out from his ruck (as well as a fresh t-shirt that can cover it), stowing the tank away as he does. He hears Karen step out from the bathroom behind him.

“I’ll wait in the van,” she says. Frank doesn’t move until he hears the room door shut behind her.

 

* * *

 

She sleeps fitfully at best. Karen has to drag her wrecked — stiff from a week of sleeping in the van or a shared bed; of being in the middle of the pit five nights out of seven — body into bed next to Frank, acutely aware that if she were to return to sleeping with Rachel and Micro Frank’d probably assume he had done something _wrong,_ or that she was just being a prick. Neither option is something Karen thinks she could stomach. 

Karen hides in the bathroom until she hears the routine slam of the room door: Kathy’s nightly departure, disappearing until her inevitable, mysterious return in the wee hours of morning. (If Karen gives herself a pep talk in the bathroom mirror, that’s between her and her reflection.)

Navigating the dark, Karen folds herself carefully into the far side of the bed — her back to Frank’s, a gulf of mattress between them —  and dreams of brown eyes and faded half-moons between calloused fingers.

 

* * *

 

 

She surges awake in the predawn hours, still in Buffalo, the sound of her own gasp forcing her upright. Karen freezes in the blue half light of morning, heart hammering, listening and waiting for the sharp sound of her breathing to wake the rest of the room. 

It doesn’t. Rachel’s sleeping pills stare at her from the nightstand; Micro snores.

Karen catches her breath and awareness returns by slow degrees, shapes taking their time solidifying in front of her: Kathy’s shadow behind the curtains, asleep in the windowsill of the room; the dresser across from her; the not-quite-pleasant freesia-scented Febreeze that’s trailed them through every motel room since Albany. Behind everything, the distant sound of the highway.

Touch comes last, as if Karen has to fall back into her body: The heavy starch of the sheets, scratchy against her bare legs and still stiff despite her continuous tossing and turning. Air conditioning stirring the hair at the crown of her head. Heat against her right palm.

Frank’s ribs, rising and falling steadily under Karen’s touch. She jerks her hand away.

She’d used him as a prop to help her sit upright. The realization snaps her fully awake. The knuckles of the offending hand curl against her chin when she looks down and finds she’s dead center of the bed — affording no space between them for Karen to have laid her palm otherwise.

For a moment, Karen thinks she can place the blame on an uneven mattress, that Frank’s weight had created an incline; she’d slipped, is all. But as she takes stock, craning her neck to survey the damage, her eyes fix on her pillow — pulled across the bed to press literally over half of Frank’s own. Just the way she sleeps at home.

“ _Shit_.” She exhales through her teeth. Her eyes slide back to Frank. 

He’s bare-chested again — a dazed voice in Karen’s head wants to know if he’s able to wear so many goddamn layers during the day to make up for some outlandish curse, a night allergy to shirts — asleep on his side. Left arm gripping the corner of the mattress like he’s afraid he’s going to topple off. Globe and anchor tattoo, the same color of the light that streams in from the exposed corners of the window where Kathy sleeps. Thin blankets gathered low around his waist.

On Frank’s right shoulder blade, she sees a messy knot of red-brown scar tissue; another, finer network of spider’s web scars crisscross the back of his neck. For a dreamlike instant, before Karen can wind up the impulse and pack it away, she thinks that if she were to touch them they’d give, and his neck would crack like glass.

Karen curls her fingers into the sheet instead.

It’s as though time has slowed to avoid disturbing the quiet. Karen’s eyes wander, allowing herself more depth of study than when she’d cut Frank’s hair. Then, it’d felt like any stray glance might sound an alarm, like all he had to do was look up and he’d know _exactly_ what she was thinking. Now, in this blue-dark and secret moment, Karen lets herself see. 

The shell of his ear — another scar there, reaching from behind his ear down along the side of Frank’s neck. The slope of his jaw, at once gentle and heavy; large features tempered by the unexpectedly soft curves which outline them. The muscle and sinew of Frank’s bare shoulders pull her focus, draw out a flare of heat in Karen’s belly as her eyes move down the slight arch of his spine into the shadowed dip just above the waistband of his sweatpants.

His left hip is exposed, sweats and blankets slung low enough to reveal an image Karen finds disconcertingly familiar. It takes a protracted moment for the term to emerge from her memories of art history class: a _pietà_. Mary draped in a dark cloak. Christ in repose, his weary head lolling against Mary’s shoulder. Mary’s pale hands clasped over her son’s chest beneath her grief-stricken face. And both of their figures crowned in gold.

A memory of Frank’s voice, the smallest Karen has ever heard it, fills Karen’s ears in the hush: _Maria. Springsteen was her favorite. We emailed, wrote letters, alla that. Phone calls when we could, right._

Karen’s no psychoanalyst, but she finds herself averting her eyes from the tattoo anyway; her attention landing on the chain at his neck. She doesn’t lean over to see the ring nestled against his dog tags. The heat at the base of her spine sours.

Which is, of course, when he wakes up.

Frank’s head shakes, his nose pressing into the pillow and the lines around his eyes deepening as he squeezes them shut tighter, just for a moment, before blinking them open and lifting his head. The bed creaks softly when he pushes up, turning over to face her.

“Hey,” he whispers, throaty. Brow bent in an expression of bleary concern that almost sends Karen into hysterics. “You okay?”

She doesn’t even have time to make like she wasn’t looking at him. Or to bury her blush somewhere private. Karen can only hope he doesn’t see it in the low light. 

Still, she swallows and forces a nod, pushing her hand through her hair and letting it rest on the crown of her head for a beat before she says, “Uh, yeah.”

He nods. When he blinks and looks away, it’s a strikingly unconscious, unguarded movement; one that throws Karen, her attention seizing on the fact that his eyelashes are so thick and dark it all feels a bit unfair, honestly.

She’s distracted enough that when he begins to sit up it’s a surprise; one that startles Karen into finally, _actually_ shimmying to her side of the bed, corralling herself back to her corner with a safe several inches between them. Frank’s eyes move from her face down to the space between them. Her pillow still precisely centered on the mattress. Frank frowns faintly, almost pouting.  

It’s gone as soon as she notices it — for which she’s grateful, because she does _not_ need to think about the shape of Frank’s mouth anymore, considering what fragments she can recall of her dreams — and he continues to move until he’s sitting upright.

He pulls the blankets with him. Karen feels the hair on her arms rise; the steady blast of the air conditioner beating through her thin sleep shirt. Frank swings his legs over the side of the bed and grabs his hoodie from where he’d hung it on the headboard.

“M’goin’ for a smoke,” he mutters, before shrugging into the hoodie — not bothering to zip it up at all — and padding barefoot out of the room.

Karen finds herself awake and alone in a room full of sleeping people. There’s a compulsion to follow Frank outside, his shadow falling through the crack in the door. She tries to trace the compulsion to its root, tied in a knot of herself.

There’s the journalistic urge, the one that took her from The Safehouse back to The Chaste to demand an interview in the first place; the one that apparently renders her incapable of peeling her eyes away from Frank Castle, lingering like a curious bystander on the edges of a highway crash. But that gives way to another, darker understanding; couched in guilt and threaded deep through her core, humming with nuclear energy: that Karen sees something of herself in Frank, or something of _Frank_ in herself. That there is an anger inside him shaped much like her own, but that his — unlike hers — has a direction, a creed.

And then there’s all the rest, a thousand different tethers criss-crossing inside her which hold the sound of Frank’s laughter, the look in his eyes when she takes him by surprise, the thin fondness she feels when she’s listened to Frank and the rest of Leatherneck riff on the same joke for too long.

She can’t sever any of them; but she can choose which ones to focus on. In a voice that sounds too much like her own mother, Karen tells herself that crushes fade. Friendship doesn’t. Not if you refuse to let it.

She gets up. Toes into her Converse, barefoot, before slipping out the door to join Frank on the sidewalk.

The morning is cool, maybe even cooler than the room itself. Karen wraps both arms around her middle as she nudges the door farther open. The end of Frank’s cigarette glows the same orange as the _VACANCY_ sign over the freeway.

He’s blowing smoke away from the door when he notices her arrival. The scent of menthol slams into her despite his efforts. Mint and tar mingle in the air.

“Hey,” they murmur in unison.

Karen flushes at that, stepping forward and pulling the door mostly shut behind her before settling against the frame. She looks down at their feet — Frank barefoot, her scuffed rubber toes. A lock of hair falls in her face. She unhooks an arm from around her middle to push it behind one ear, looking up with the same movement.

Frank watches her, free hand buried in the pocket of his hoodie. Karen can still track the movement of his fingers through the fabric. Tapping. 

She swallows against the chill. “Uhm.” She frowns, chewing her lip. She’s cold, but doesn’t want to go back inside. “Can I borrow one of those?” she asks, nodding to the cigarette in Frank’s hand, hungry for something to do, something warm to take hold of.

Frank’s face screws up briefly, as if he might refuse; but the look disappears fast and he nods, pulling out the pack and his Bic. He stacks them together in one hand, using his thumb to pop the top on the pack.

Karen withdraws a single cigarette and the lighter. She takes her time lighting it, doing her best to look casual. The faint shiver in her fingers doesn’t help.

She takes a drag as she passes him back the lighter and immediately coughs out the strange, minty smoke. “Jesus,” she hisses.

Frank chuckles, those long, curved lines appearing in his cheeks as he watches her. “You ah, alright there, Kare?”

There it is again: _Kare_. That gentle drop of the last consonant of her name. Once, an accident — a slip of the tongue, or a hushed tone so low she simply missed the final letter. Twice, a coincidence — he’d been upset, not speaking clearly, not entirely coherent. Three times…

Something flutters in her chest, distracts her from responding for a second too long. Frank’s smirk is already fading when she replies, “You enjoy these?” She lifts the cigarette for good measure. 

He shrugs. The gesture is surprisingly innocuous, almost sheepish. “Suppose I do.” He turns his attention on the rapidly burning cigarette between his fingers. Sways a little. She recognizes the look in his eyes, the way they go soft and far away as he remembers another lifetime. Karen stands up a little straighter.

“I didn’t, ah, smoke when I enlisted. But most of the men in my first company did.” He takes a drag, continues, “Keeps you awake, keeps you from gettin’ hungry.” Another shrug. Frank’s attention doesn’t turn back to her. He holds the cigarette away from his face, examines it in the gradually swelling light of morning. Smoke rises from the tip in blue curls. It’s almost burned away entirely.

Frank takes two steps to the trash can in front of their room and deposits it in the ashtray on top before stepping back into place beside Karen. His eyes pass from the sidewalk to the sky, jaw angling upward. Then he turns his head, looks at her with his chin still raised. She watches with a jolt of surprise as he smiles crookedly, stricken by a playfulness she’s unsure he would entertain in daylight. “Guess I didn’t really see the point in trying anything else.”

She allows herself to stare for a few seconds, then forces down another drag, still wincing when the vitriolically fucking bad taste hits her tongue; like eating something dry and bitter seconds after brushing her teeth. Shakes her head when she sees Frank pull a fresh one from his pack, lighting up his second smoke of the day. It doesn’t take at first; flame illuminates Frank’s face in bursts before the menthol starts smoldering in earnest.

“You know there’s other cigarettes, right?” she asks, the gibe slipping out before she can shape it. Her voice tapers away when Frank looks up at her. “Just.” She swallows and taps ash from the tip of her cigarette, committing to the bit. “A thought.”

He chuckles again; Karen smiles. Frank exhales smoke and pulls the end of his cigarette from the wide bow of his lower lip. His eyes, brown and bright in the crawling dawn, fold up with crow’s feet. “I’ll take it under consideration.”

“Good,” Karen mutters back, her cheeks aching as she attempts to keep her smile contained; something fuller, more conspicuous threatening to break free from the buoyant place in her chest. In an effort to hide it, she looks away. Frank takes another drag. Silence filters back between them, more comfortable than conversation.

The wind picks up, funnels cold air in off the lake. For a moment Karen can trick herself into thinking it’s fall; that the day won’t grow hotter. The illusion is fed by her need to tuck her chin to her collar against the unseasonal chill.

Minutes pass in amiable silence. Frank rocks where he stands. Karen shivers. The sky begins to blush with morning light. 

She watches traffic and wordlessly, almost reflexively, plays the old game she and Kevin would use to pass the time on long drives: guess about the next passing car. Color. Model. The state on the license plate. Whether it’d be a family on vacation, or college kids on a road trip, or a little old lady just barely managing to peek over the wheel.

The half-hearted effort to quell her urge to look at Frank doesn’t work for long. Eventually, he snuffs out his second cigarette against the trash can a few feet away — roughly two-thirds smoked.

“M’gonna shower,” Frank grunts into the quiet. He returns the remainder of his cigarette to the pack, then turns, looks at her. Karen’s height sabotages her effort to avoid his gaze, as she looks straight ahead and finds her eyes dead level with Frank’s.

“You comin’ inside?” he asks, sway pulling his weight from left to right. The words are rough in his mouth, voice pitched low — conscientious of sleeping bodies within earshot.

If she weren’t flushed against the cold, her cheeks would be burning. Karen’s reply sticks in her throat. She shakes her head instead.

Frank nods. His eyes flick over her arms, blanketed with goosebumps.

Before she’s able to do anything — though what she could do, Karen has no fucking idea — Frank shrugs out of his hoodie and holds it out to her. “Use it, if you want.”

She snatches it from his hands on instinct, thoughts turned jagged and distracted. Karen thinks she might actually _squeak_ in response, but luck is on her side, for once: Frank is already slipping back through the door by the time any sound makes it out of her chest. 

Karen stands in the chill, fingers worrying the fabric of Frank’s sweatshirt. It’s soft, still body-warm. When she slips it on, the stitching in the shoulders rubs against her biceps. The metal clicks loud in the quiet as she thumbs over the zipper. Karen gathers the ends of the hoodie’s sleeves in her palms, keeping her hands covered. She leans against the motel’s brick exterior and breathes.

It’s their first day off since the day after the Plattsburgh show and Leatherneck surprises Karen by being slow to rise — for them. As the pale pink dawn turns magenta and Kathy’s sleeping form in the windowsill refuses to stir, Karen shuffles back into their room and climbs back into the empty bed. She doesn’t take off the hoodie. It shifts pleasantly around her shoulders as she settles against the mattress, content to get a couple more hours of sleep before the world wakes up.

Karen yawns into her pillow. Frank’s shower fills the room with white noise.

 

* * *

 

“Y’all,” Micro’s voice cuts clean through Kathy’s one-woman Raincoats sing-a-long. They turn in the passenger seat, twisting around to face the rest of the band. Frank and Rachel raise their heads in the middle bench. Karen inches forward to the edge of her seat in the back.

“We have to stop at a real grocery store.” Micro’s eyes are wide and pleading. Blue, blue, blue behind their purple-tinted glasses. They dig their fingers into the back of their seat as they speak. Karen’s eyes flick over their chipped nail polish, an iridescent lime green that catches the light. “I miss fruit.”

The van is silent. Rachel contemplates, leaning against the window in the seat just behind Kathy. Karen can’t get a proper look at Frank, not without leaning over the back of the middle bench. All she can track are his bare shoulders — another homemade muscle tank to combat the heat, even if the van is fucking _freezing_ , given how high Kathy blasts the A/C when she drives. Karen pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands.

“A motherfucker could use some vitamin C.” Kathy turns her head towards Micro, briefly. “You wanna find us a place?” She points at the phone in their hand.

Micro grins and settles back in their seat. “Already on it.” They unplug Kathy’s phone and shove the audio jack into theirs. “There’s a co-op off the next exit.” 

Less than ten minutes pass before they’re pulling up in front of the co-op, Micro scrambling out of the van and through the front entrance. By the time everyone else makes it inside, Micro’s posted up in the produce section: big, shining heirloom tomatoes in mottled shades of voluptuous red and gold; bulging mangoes with their dyadic color scheme on display. Karen watches Micro hoist a bag teeming with red grapes, their nose scrunching in concentration. 

Kathy darts out from behind Karen through the open automatic doors, making a beeline for the display of navel oranges directly in front of them. She shoves two into the scoop neck of her sports bra. “Just like when I was a kid,” she cackles.

Rachel chuckles beside Karen. “Bet that went well.”

Kathy’s smirk goes thin and mean. Karen finds herself paused in the entryway, information dangling in front of her; a carrot, and Karen all too aware of the stick.

“Don’t you know it,” Kathy cracks back, a brutal bitter edge to her voice. She raises her eyebrows in Rachel’s direction and blows a bright pink bubble — Karen hadn’t even realized she was chewing gum — that obscures the center of her face.

The snap as it pops shatters the stilted moment. 

“I’m gonna go see a guy about some meat.” Kathy juts her chin towards the deli in the back corner of the co-op, eyeballing the cold cuts. “Anybody want a sandwich?”

“I’ll go with you.” Rachel nods, falling into step beside her. In the handful of seconds it’s been since Karen last glanced at Micro, they’ve found a basket and laden it with more color than Karen’s tired eyes can readily identify. Radishes dangle off the side; a pineapple stalk juts out from beneath fuzzy brown kiwis.

Frank grunts beside her, the steady rattle of his breath filling her ears. “Coffee?” His boots shuffle on the plastic mat just inside the doorway. He nods towards a coffee station set up along the front windows of the co-op, sunlight glinting temptingly off the metal carafe. Karen has to narrow her eyes to read the laminated, handwritten sign above it: _Enjoy a complimentary cup of coffee while you shop!_

Her gaze snaps from the sign to Frank’s face. She breathes in deep; an instinctive response to his proximity.

When the scent of menthol assails her nostrils, she jerks in confusion. She’d have noticed if Frank took a smoke break recently — they’ve been driving for two hours already. He hasn’t had a cigarette since she’d given him shit about it early that morning.

Karen’s hands fidget nervously inside the pockets of her sweatshirt, knuckles butting against shrink-wrapped cardboard, the textured surface of a flint wheel.

She realizes three things in lightning-quick succession: 

One, there’s a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in her pocket that don’t belong to her.

Two, the pocket _itself_ doesn’t belong to her. She’s still wearing Frank’s hoodie.

Three, Frank hasn’t smoked since this morning because Karen has, for all intents and purposes, stolen his shit.

She gasps, low — the sound effectively hidden by the dull rumble of the co-op’s air conditioning — as heat floods her cheeks.

“Karen?” Frank asks. His eyebrows inch upward, only serving to make Karen’s stomach twist around a fresh bolt of anxiety.

 _Easy_. Karen swallows the dry knot in her throat, nods, and finally replies, “Uh. Yeah — coffee sounds great.” She gestures for Frank to lead the way and follows after his uneven gait. Her unfocused eyes eventually find purchase, staring at the question mark inked into Frank’s right shoulder; the heavy, black flame curving between lines of poetry.

Coming to a stop in front of the coffee station, he passes her a biodegradable cup. It’s warm against her palms. “Oh!” Karen jolts, surprised; again having fallen headlong into the current of her thoughts. At least her cheeks are hot anyway — the renewed heat can’t make her flush any more noticeable than it already is. Probably. Hopefully.

She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and steadies the coffee in her hands. “I —” The words lose themselves on her tongue. “Thanks.”

Frank huffs, tips his own cup towards her in reply, and takes a drink. Karen mirrors him.

He levels an indecipherable look in her direction, polishing off his cup in three deep glugs before marching to where Rachel emerges from between two shelves. They turn down another aisle, sign above their heads reading: _Coffee, Tea, Sleep Aids._

Karen’s eyes wander around the co-op, hungry for a distraction from the soft weight of Frank’s hoodie against her shoulders. She has to tilt her wrists up, so the too-long sleeves can gather at her elbows.

Eventually, she lands on the cigarette display behind the customer service counter; the primary color packaging of American Spirits catches her attention first. Then, a few neutrally colored cartons with thin green text Karen can’t make out at a distance. Clear bins screwed into the wall showcase different strains of tobacco or clove; rolling papers and kits in the counter display. Even a few handmade wooden pipes.

One year, when Karen was thirteen, she demanded that she be allowed to read her mother’s prized first edition of _The Fellowship of the Ring_. Her parents’ compromise was that the whole family would read it after supper, each taking turns reading aloud (Karen alone, Kevin with help from their mother). Her father indulged his theatrical streak by bringing out a long pipe and smoking as he recited Gandalf’s pragmatic odes.

She takes another sip of her coffee and walks over.

The counter itself is manned by a slightly bored looking guy in his mid-fifties, salt and pepper mustache twitching as his eyes skim a heavy book spread out on the countertop. He doesn’t speak as Karen approaches, gaze flitting over her face before returning to his reading.

Karen hazards a look over her shoulder. The back of Frank’s freshly shorn head is bowed in conversation with Rachel as they both study an end-cap stacked with brown paper bags full of coffee so aromatic Karen’s nose twitches. 

“You need help, sweetheart?”

Karen faces forward again so quickly her hair whips the back of her neck. Irritation and embarrassment grind together in her stomach; her expression sours, mouth twisting into a scowl. “Just a minute,” she snaps, harsh and low. Frank’s presence behind her makes her spine itch.

She frowns up at the wall. Tries to picture Frank smoking American Spirits and can’t. The brand has become synonymous in her memory with douchey philosophy majors smoking outside the art building, trying to pick up art major co-eds. Karen’s entire self recoils at the thought of Frank pulling one of those blue and red boxes from his coat pocket outside The Safehouse.

She moves on to the packages of loose tobacco, the metal of the counter digging into her palm as she leans in over the glass to study the labels. Her other hand taps against the package of menthols inside Frank’s hoodie pocket. A local Burley catches her eye: _Blended with spicy humectants for sharp flavor._

Karen hums. Then she reaches for her wallet.

 

* * *

 

“Hey Legs!” Kathy shouts, throwing her voice over Rachel’s head (and the head of the customer behind her) to the tables by the complimentary coffee. 

Karen — at this point sniffing her coffee more than actually drinking it — jolts upright. One hand presses against her abdomen, a reflexive bid to keep the tobacco and papers she’d purchased from spilling out of Frank’s generous hoodie pockets.

“You comin’ or not?” Kathy barks across the store. An old man behind the customer service counter frowns in the direction of the cash registers; the kid ringing up the people in line ahead of Leatherneck looks on with wide, apprehensive eyes.

“Uh, yeah!” Karen calls back. The co-op isn’t large. It doesn’t take long for her to reach the rest of the group. But when she does, Kathy has already seized onto a new topic to fuel her antics.

“Hey Frank — they got a sweet deal, might interest you,” Kathy says, grinning, voice boisterous. Frank is alone in line when Karen approaches, separated from Kathy, Rachel and Micro by another waiting customer. When Kathy speaks, the customer shifts and screws up his face, ostensibly annoyed.

Karen steps into line beside Frank, the hand not holding her coffee shoved deep in her (his) pocket.

Frank’s brow furrows as he leans to one side to catch Kathy’s eye. Karen hears Rachel’s low chuckle. “They’re offering ten percent off all beer and barbecue sauce if you can show military I.D.” Kathy clarifies.

Frank snorts, but says nothing. Karen notices the customer immediately ahead of them tense. And if she notices it, she’s sure Frank does too.

“Yep,” Rachel contributes, dry, just loud enough for Frank and Karen to make her out, “Figure you pink mist enough enemies of the state, you’re entitled to free condiments.” The end of her sentence is nearly overpowered by Kathy’s piercing cackle.

“That’s enough,” a voice cuts in. It’s the guy stood between the five of them, apparently fed up. Frank shifts forward slightly next to Karen. Kathy raises her eyebrows.

The customer is clutching a six pack of Natty Ice in one hand, the other fisted at his side. The long-sleeved t-shirt tucked into his jeans is almost precisely the same shade of off-white as his thinning hair. Aside from that, he doesn’t look very old. If she had to guess, Karen would put him in his early fifties.

He also looks so petulantly fucking indignant Karen half expects him to start stomping his feet.

“Is it?” Rachel asks him, resting her elbow casually on the check counter. The poor teenaged cashier looks like they want to drop through the floor. Part of Karen — the part that isn’t more interested in seeing what happens next — can relate.

“Yeah,” the customer starts, “veterans’ discount—”

“You serve?” Rachel interrupts him, voice perfunctory. She takes her time raking her eyes over him, from the scuffed toes of his tennis shoes to the top of his head, before finally meeting his eyes. Her own are deadpan, practically half-lidded. The look of someone who’s just asked a question to which they already know the answer.

The corner of Karen’s mouth twitches as the back of the asshole’s neck turns bright red. “I. That’s not… veterans’ discount is a way of showing appreciation.”

“Forty whole cents of appreciation,” Kathy interjects. “Baller.”

The guy’s gaze falls pointedly on Kathy, then; looking her up and down, seeming to deliberately linger on her throat. “You ought to have more respect for the men who fought for this country, young _lady_.”

There is a very still moment. The outline of Kathy’s grin falters. Micro freezes, one hand still in their pink-studded wallet. Karen grits her teeth; her stance shifts, weight rocking itself back. Beside her, a dangerous focus rolls off of Frank in steady waves.

Rachel’s flint eyes narrow. She turns to face the stranger head on, stepping a few inches forward and to the side, putting herself directly between him and Kathy. She’s a good three inches taller than the dude, at least. He puffs up a little, watching as Rachel squares her shoulders, re-adjusting his grip on his beer.

Then, she calmly reaches for the right sleeve of her t-shirt, pulling it up and hooking it over her shoulder. It uncovers the U.S.M.C. emblem inked in black high on her bicep, slightly faded with time yet unmistakable. Her middle finger juts out from her grip on her shirtsleeve, pressing into the bottom of the globe, just over the anchor.

If the tattoo weren’t enough, Karen can see by the way the asshole’s face blanches that every aspect of Rachel’s bearing — not to mention the subsonic change in atmosphere — is enough to make him reconsider.

“Well I… I-I’m sorry. I didn’t —” he backtracks, “y’know, I believe in supporting our troops.”

“Thanks.” Frank grunts from directly behind him, face impassive. “From all of us.”

The customer’s shoulders jerk and he turns to look at Frank, frowning, until their eyes meet — after which he promptly schools his features into the worst poker face Karen has _ever_ seen. Unsurprising, considering he’s sandwiched between a stony Rachel, a now visibly delighted Kathy, and goddamn _Frank_ , drawn to his full height and doing that smiling-without-actually-smiling thing that makes something burn grease fire hot in Karen’s middle.

Karen’s awareness cracks wide open when pain blossoms in her hand, her nails digging into the soft skin of her palm. She blinks, takes in her surroundings with renewed focus: Kathy shooting surreptitious death glares at the prick behind her, with Rachel still standing guard between them (for Kathy’s sake, or the stranger’s, or both, Karen can’t be sure); the jagged tension zapping through the air between everyone around her; the creak of Kathy’s combat boot chewing into linoleum.   

The heady attention Karen couldn’t help but train on Frank in all of his take-no-shit glory wilts in the face of considering exactly what this scene might have looked like if Kathy didn’t have family at her side.

From then on it’s peace and quiet: Karen sipping at the remainder of her coffee, the guy’s ears bright red as he pretends to have spotted something vitally interesting on the tabloid covers lined up on a rack by the checkout, Rachel turned back around to offer a polite smile to the cashier.

Next to Karen, Frank doesn’t let up. He stares intently at the superfluous dipshit in front of them, breathing down the back of his neck until he arrives at the cashier and sets his beer on the counter. When the guy reaches for his wallet, Frank pulls out his own. For a stretched out, crazy second, Karen thinks Frank is about to pay for the guy’s beer.

Then Frank takes a card out from his wallet and holds it up for the cashier to see, and Karen nearly chokes on her coffee.

“Ten percent off, yeah?” Frank says, nodding once at the beer on the counter. The customer looks between Frank’s face and the Marine Corps I.D. in his hand, a small, garbled sound falling from his mouth as he does. Karen doesn’t blame him, although she chalks up the strangled sensation in her own throat to desperately trying not to laugh.

(And trying even harder to keep from leaning forward to sneak a look at Frank’s military I.D., rational mind noting it’s probably _beyond_ expired; the promise of new information a dangerous, heady temptation.)  

The cashier nods. Frank slips the I.D. back into his wallet and flits a glance across Karen’s face. It’s instinct, rather than any physical evidence she can point to, that tells her Frank’s doing his own level best not to smile. He maintains a straight face as he puts his wallet away, slaps the customer on the back hard enough to send him stumbling against the counter, and heads for the exit.

Karen tries not to dwell on how fast her heart races when Frank fucks with people on purpose, and follows.

 

* * *

 

Outside, Kathy hurls herself into the far back bench of the van before making a droll announcement: “I’m eating a sandwich and going to sleep. Everyone, fuck off.” 

Karen’s stomach aches as she and Micro climb into the middle row while Rachel takes the wheel and Frank settles into the passenger seat. Rachel turns over the engine — which seems louder than before, ripping through a weary silence.

As they pull onto the freeway, Micro produces a rainbow-plated pocket knife Karen’s never seen before and proceeds to slice into a kiwi. They pass Karen half of it, cut into a fan shape. Someone switches the stereo on, volume set low; scratchy lo-fi recordings of The Mountain Goats scoring the scene inside the van.

“Thanks,” Karen mumbles. She smiles before biting into the green flesh of the kiwi, juice bursting across her tongue.

Frank shifts in the passenger seat. Karen listens to a sharp inhale followed by a gritty exhale, the sound unmistakably _Frank_. When she looks up, she can’t quite see his face properly in the rearview mirror from her position behind the driver’s seat. But she can see the left side: his distinctive profile, a clenched jaw and one large, pink-tipped ear. The lines of the Marine Corps emblem inked into his left bicep stretch while he reaches across his chest and back to press his fingertips into the meat of his right shoulder. Karen frowns as she chews.

Rachel glances over as well. She opens her mouth as if to say something, but seems to decide against it, turning her attention back to the road.

Karen sways as Rachel merges into the next lane, the movement sending the contents of Karen’s pockets spilling onto the seat between her and Micro: a bag of tobacco, a pack of rolling papers. The sight surprises her, impulse purchase forgotten in the sudden turn their pitstop had taken. She swallows and looks back to the front of the van. 

Karen’s missed whatever unspoken exchange happened between Frank and Rachel in the bare moments she was distracted. But she catches the end of it: Rachel’s raised eyebrows lowering as she turns forward, and Frank’s abrupt, deliberate grunt, wordless but clear: _Don’t_.

A particular photo she’d taken the night before flashes like lightning in her mind: the dark silhouette of Frank’s brace snug around his shoulder as he’d swung the microphone up, tangling it in the rafters during the last song. He’d tested the strength of Leatherneck’s leads by leaning forward, pulling the cord taut as he caught the swinging mic and howled the final lyrics of _murder was the case they gave me_. No one commented when he did a curl up to pull it down, after. Karen remembers watching him before turning and making eye contact with Rachel as she snapped her guitar into its case, something in her face sending a cold twinge of worry through Karen’s middle despite her stoic expression.

Chewing her bottom lip, Karen doubles over and pulls her laptop from where she’d stashed it under the bench. It’s not large, but it’s a flat surface. It’ll do. She tugs it onto her lap and hopes she’s not too out of practice.

“Karen?” Micro’s voice is — breathy. Incredulous. She jerks her head up, hands frozen mid-air. Micro’s eyes are brilliant in the sunlight, seeming all the more blue for the green of rural Pennsylvania rushing past in the window behind them. “ _Is that a weed?_ ”

Heat floods Karen’s face with a violence. “I —”

Karen catches Rachel’s raised eyebrows in the rearview mirror; Frank cranes his neck in the seat beside her (his movements are careful, rigid around the edges. Karen’s stomach lurches.).

“Well _shit_ , Legs!” Kathy says, springing into view as she hooks both arms over the middle seat and leans forward.

“Huh?” Frank grunts. Karen is still frozen, blinking owlishly at him when his eyes land on the tobacco laid out on her laptop, the single paper in her fingers.

“I —” she tries again. Her mouth snaps shut. She feels dazed, all the blood in her body rushing to her cheeks leaving her mind vulnerable. “Cigarettes?” Her voice is weak. Stupid. Karen swallows. “For —”

Micro _tsks_ sharply and shakes their head. “Nuh-uh. Put that away. I have this.”

Karen’s embarrassment is shooed away by curiosity. “What?”

Micro offers no further explanation. Instead, they pull their backpack out from beneath Frank’s seat and withdraw a small plastic container, contents clattering as Micro sets it on their lap and pops open the lid. Inside is a rainbow selection of glittering nail polish vials, a bright blue grinder, and a cylindrical orange container typically used for prescription medication. It’s unlabeled. But when Micro twists the top off, the clinging, sweet scent of cannabis permeates the van almost instantly.

“Here,” Micro says, offering Karen the container. When she takes it, they pass along the grinder as well. “I think we could all use a little R’n’R.”

Karen pauses. She turns from Micro to spare a glance at the front seat. Frank is looking at her, eyes crinkled. When she raises her eyebrows at him, amusement passes over his face like a shimmer, there and gone. He shrugs and turns away.

“Uhm. Okay,” Karen murmurs to no one in particular and sets to work.

She lifts the lid on the grinder and plucks one of the larger nugs from the container, breaking it into three pieces in her fingers before pressing them into the top layer of the grinder and twisting the lid back down. For a few strained seconds she’s hyper-aware of her movements; Kathy’s arms still hooked over the back of the seat between her and Micro as she monitors Karen’s progress.

The pungent scent of the herb only strengthens as Karen rotates the lid, then unscrews the second layer. She sets it gingerly on the surface of her closed laptop.

As Karen folds the paper and rolls it between her fingers, the awareness of Kathy’s eyes on her — and of everyone’s expectant silence — falls to the wayside. She concentrates on the rhythm of the task, brow furrowing, falling into the comfort of ritual as muscle memory kicks in. She pinches a generous amount of ground herb between her periwinkle-lacquered fingertips and sprinkles it in the cradle of the paper.

But when she leans down to seal it, Kathy nudges her shoulder.

“We’re big kids,” Kathy says, smirking.

Karen blinks at her. Micro giggles. The sound pulls a huff of laughter from Karen’s own chest as she nods and reaches for more marijuana, adding it to the joint.

She holds it up where Kathy can see and quirks an eyebrow. “Satisfied?”

Kathy winks and gives her a thumbs up. Karen snorts. Then she ducks down, tongue darting out to wet the paper. When it’s finished, Karen holds it up for inspection.

Kathy whistles. “Not fucking bad, Reporter.”

Karen nods her thanks, preoccupied with picking a fleck of marijuana leaf from the tip of her tongue. Looking down, there are only a few stray pieces dotting surface of her laptop. Definitely not bad, all things considered.

She feels herself smiling, more proud than she’d care to admit, and doesn’t quite make eye contact when she offers the joint to Micro — who shakes their head and holds up both hands.

“Nah, you rolled it, you hit it first,” they assure her.

“Windows,” Rachel cautions.

As Frank trips the switch to lower the passenger seat window, Karen hears shuffling in the back of the van. She turns at the sound of a sharp pop and sees Kathy scuttling across the top of the backend storage to push open one of the rear door windows.

Wind rips through the van, whipping Karen’s hair into a frenzy. Flyaway strands catch at the corners of her mouth, her eyes. She doesn’t bother trying to tuck it back, just gathers a fistful and holds it away from her face, placing the joint between her lips. Micro cups their hand around the lighter as Karen ignites it and takes a deep drag.

Maybe too deep. She coughs out the thick smoke almost immediately, eyes watering.

Kathy chuckles. “You good?”

“Y-yeah,” Karen coughs into her palm. “Been a while.” There goes her moment of confidence, rolling out the open windows with her smoke.

“No shit,” Kathy replies, making exaggerated grabby hands over the back of the seat. Karen laughs — which only makes her cough harder as she passes the joint over. Micro smiles sympathetically and hands her a bottle of water.

It helps. Karen watches Kathy toke without flinching before giving it to Micro, who in turn gives it to Frank.

Karen wishes suddenly, intensely, that they weren’t in the van. That they were somewhere indoors, somewhere quiet, where she could see Frank’s face.

She watches his profile now, sunlight and wind streaming through the open window. The cherry on the joint burns bright orange with Frank’s slow breath in. He holds it in his chest. Karen downs half the water bottle and pretends not to watch.

Frank’s skin is warm when he passes it back, fingers dry and slightly rough against Karen’s.

She lifts the joint to her lips, inhaling carefully; aiming not to overdo it this time. The smoke fills her lungs as she thinks, _seven days_. _Seven days and I’ll be home._

Wind kisses her cheeks. Rachel murmurs something that makes Frank smile, but the only thing Karen hears over the rushing air is music, faint and tinny:

_The water ran so deep that you couldn’t make out the ocean floor / Then I saw you in the light_

Karen holds her breath.

 

* * *

 

Three days later, she wakes up to the van rolling to a stop on a highway shoulder in the middle of what she’s pretty sure is still Pennsylvania. The crick in her neck that’s been forming since Pittsburgh is reaching critical mass, a throbbing knot of pain earned from shooting two basement shows in a row. The sky is bluish gray through the windshield, the air outside cool, gusting in when Rachel throws open the driver side door. Karen’s riding shotgun. 

It’s early. She rubs her face, curling forward towards the dash with a groan – she hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

“Gooooood mornin’,” Kathy wraps her arms around Karen’s headrest from her spot in the second row of seats. When Karen looks back at her, she pops her gum and grins. “Time to stretch your legs, Legs. There are technical difficulties.”

“Everything okay?” Karen sighs: at the gray morning, the pain in her neck, the fuzzy taste in her mouth, the nickname. She’s fairly certain they’re supposed to be in Jersey already.

“All good. Micro didn’t shut the back doors all the way.”

Karen opens her door, stepping outside just as Micro calls back, “I shut them with appropriate force. I can’t be held responsible for shitty doors.”

“The Shitty Doors, now _that’s_ a band name,” Kathy answers, sliding open the side door with more gusto than is strictly necessary.

Micro, unseen, retorts, “Isn’t that just The Doors?”

It’s when Karen turns to watch Kathy, cackling as she swings herself out of her seat that she sees Frank laid out in the very back, one knee bent, hands folded on his chest. He’s wearing a pullover sweatshirt in lieu of his favored zip-up hoodie (currently draped over Karen’s seat in the front, the soft fabric a welcome barrier between her and the slightly rougher upholstery of the van’s interior). He’s staring at the ceiling, face blank.

Karen hopes he’s not asleep, because if she has to add ‘ability to sleep with his eyes open’ to the list of things to keep in mind about Frank Castle she’s going to scream.

He blinks once, lifting his head to look at her. Karen looks back, not-quite-smiling good morning, before she turns and trails Kathy toward the back of the van.

They’re pulled off at a nearly empty weigh station; one tractor-trailer sleeps silently a few yards off, curtains drawn around the cab windows.

Rachel’s around the other side of the van – Karen glimpses a flash of red through tinted glass. Kathy and Micro are trading bullshit, Kathy leaning against a light pole, Micro standing on the rear bumper of the van, apparently too short to reach whatever the problem with the hinge is.

Karen can hear one of the far back doors come open as she steps a little closer to the rear, stopping to look into the trees aside the highway. When she raises her arms, stretching, it does not occur to her that she’s too close to the doors, or that Micro’s too busy being talked at by Kathy to even notice Karen’s there.

It’s a miracle of timing, really. Micro throws the other back door open just as Karen’s finished stretching her arms out, full wingspan, hands splayed wide. The fingertips of her left hand collide with the flat of the door as it swings open. Karen registers Kathy’s “oh, _fuck_ ” a split-second before she hears a loud _POP_ that reverberates in her stomach.

She registers a sense of wrongness first. The pain follows after.

When Karen raises her left hand, the ring and middle finger are… gnarled. Not horror movie fucked – they’re still facing the right direction – but she’s pretty sure her knuckles aren’t supposed to curve up like that. Her middle finger is veering to the side just enough to make Karen grateful for her empty stomach.

“Karen? Karen! Oh shit, was that – _shit_. I’m so, _so_ sorry.” Micro’s tenor is encroaching on soprano range. Their hands are up, but they’re not reaching out to her so much as signalling surrender. Rachel circles around from the other side of the van, expression of calm curiosity quickly breaking into a grimace.

“Oh. Ow… ow. _Ow_.” Karen’s voice is clipped, matter-of-fact. She isn’t freaking out. It’s fine. She is in pain, and when you are in pain you say ‘ow.'

From inside a fragile calm, she knows: she isn’t feeling it fully. Not yet. A tide rises in her chest. Pain, panic, revulsion, embarrassment. She hears boots hit gravel and crunch, stepping heavily into her orbit. A large hand enters her line of sight. 

Karen makes herself look up from crooked fingers at Frank, who has appeared at her side out of nowhere. He waits for her eyes to meet his before speaking: “Okay. You’re gonna sit. C’mere.”

Frank is urging her toward the van’s open side door, right hand at the small of her back, left hovering under her injured hand. His fingertips press against her sweaty t-shirt. Nodding vaguely, Karen lets herself be steered, and sits on the edge of the van floor, facing the woods. A burning builds in her fingers. 

“Fuck, Karen, I’m sorry.” Micro’s still fluttering close by, wide-eyed.

Frank’s nose wrinkles. He pointedly does not look at Micro. Karen is momentarily distracted from the gnawing pain in her fingers by a swell of guilt. She bends her head, body curling self-protectively inward.

“Someone get me the kit,” Frank says, pushing the sleeves of his sweatshirt up his forearms before reaching around Karen and hauling a heavy duffel bag out of the back seat, which he drops on the ground in front of her. He sits on it, leaning over her hand; the soft fabric of the hood pulled over the crown of his head brushes Karen’s nose.

Micro has stopped talking. Rachel’s passing Frank the first aid kit. Kathy’s chuckling somewhere in the background, a kind of _shit-dude-that-fucking-sucks_ laugh that Karen knows she shouldn’t take personally, but which pisses her off all the same. She grits her teeth and watches Frank’s hands.  

Thankfully, Rachel shoos Kathy and Micro off, giving Karen room to breathe and Frank space to work. The wind kicks up. Karen clenches her un-mangled hand into a fist and laughs, more air than sound, meager and cheerless.

“I was… stretching, and. My hand hit the door. God, this is so stupid.”

She’s breathing too fast, trying to concentrate on steadying her voice, pain piling up behind each word. She wants, desperately, to keep it together. She’s in the company of people she has seen bleed, one way or another, virtually every night this tour. People who keep an alarmingly well stocked first aid kit because it is absolutely necessary. People who have been _shot at_. And here she is with an ouchie on her finger. God. Damn. It.

Frank’s turning her hand in both of his. He holds it palm up, pressing his thumb into the center. It aches like fuck, but doesn’t make the pain spike. “That hurt?” he asks, looking up at her.

Karen jerks her head to the side, answers, “Doesn’t make it worse. Is it broken?”

Frank shakes his head. “Dislocated. We gotta put ‘em back.”

 _Put them back_. Fuck.

What Karen means to say is _okay_. What she says instead is “Jesus Christ,” involuntarily shifting her fingers so they bump against Frank’s, hard. The muscles in her hand spasm. Her vision swims. When she rears up off her seat with the pain, Frank plants a hand on her shoulder, drags her back down.  

“Okay, okay…” His voice is lower, suddenly, likely inaudible to anyone but Karen now that Rachel’s waved Kathy and Micro off to a respectful distance. He’s got one hand still cradling her own, the other squeezing her shoulder. Karen feels lightheaded. “Breathe,” he grinds out, leaning close.

She gasps. Frank shakes his head, once. His thumb, broad and comfortably warm despite the summer humidity, swipes across Karen’s collarbone as if in time with the movement of his head.

“In through your nose, slow.” His voice is strikingly clear, the rustle and creak of wind through trees pushed to the background. She stares at him, overtaken by the distinct sensation of being safe indoors as a storm rages outside.

Frank inhales through his nose. Karen follows suit. “And out through your mouth.” They exhale in unison. “Keep going,” he tells her, the soft underside of her wrist tickling with the shifting of his thumb.

Karen does keep going, taking her time through two or three deep breaths, watching Frank watching her. She sways forward a little despite herself, wanting to curl up, go to sleep, be done with this. The pressure of Frank’s hand against hers is more solid now, turning the palm down, sliding his fingers so they bracket her own.

“You sure I don’t need to go to a hospital?” Karen feels silly, asking. Like she’s looking for attention. But she can’t not ask.

Frank snorts. “You’ll live. Promise.” When he looks up at her, his dark eyes soften so slightly Karen can’t be sure she’s not imagining it. But she doesn’t think she is, when he continues, even quieter: “I’ve done this before, okay?”

 _Christ. Of course he has._ “Okay.” God, her voice is small. Frank’s breath smells like green tea, and his gaze is steady.

“You good?” He squints, just a little.

Karen can’t help but laugh again, with a note of panic. But yeah, she can do this. She nods her head, _yes_. The morning breeze accentuates the heat in her cheeks.

She recalls, vividly, a moment from the other night: Frank sat on a closed toilet seat in a shitty motel bathroom, a cagey set to his shoulders and a cheap, patterned shower curtain behind him. The look he’d given her just before pivoting around, so she could reach the back of his head with the electric razor.

Behind Frank, now, is a curtain of trees. His shoulders are relaxed enough, hunched forward, knees knocking gently against her own. She’s not sure where everybody else is, and no cars have passed by since they’ve stopped. The air around them suddenly seems very still. A pocket of quiet.

He scooches the duffel closer, positioning her left arm against her thigh to steady it, her wrist resting lightly on his right kneecap. Karen registers the warmth of his leg through his dark jeans, his callouses brushing her skin. She tries to focus on anything that isn’t the tension and pain in her own body, and Frank is _right there_ , close enough that Karen can smell his generic deodorant and fucking menthols. And under that, the warm, dry scent of the van. More pungent than it was at the start of tour – eleven days is plenty of time for things to ripen. Right now, though, she’s struck by a familiarity that nearly overwhelms.

Frank’s giving her fingers a final once-over, brow furrowing. He pushes the hood back off his head — Karen hears the soft friction of the fabric against his freshly shorn hair; it drags up the sense memory of stubble beneath her fingertips. She draws a deep breath.

Frank takes hold of her ring finger first, gripping both segments of it firmly between his thumb and forefinger using two hands. Then he _pulls_ , curving the finger up before driving it back down. The process takes maybe two seconds, but Karen has to bite down on the strangled sound in her throat all the same. All at once she’s pressing her forehead into Frank’s shoulder; he pushes back, lets Karen brace herself against him.

“ _Fuck_.” Her voice is wet, breaking in the middle of the word. A faint, coppery tang curls around her taste buds.

“I know, I know, hey. One down.” Frank’s voice is right against the shell of her ear. She rears back out of his space, abashed. Tries not to linger on how badly she wants to stay there, buried in his shoulder. Fails.

Frank adjusts his perch on the duffel. The wind crescendos, imparting an unseasonal chill — his breath is as pleasantly warm against her hand as it was against the side of her neck, seconds before.

“Just,” Karen continues, swallowing, “get it over with.”

Frank nods, whets his lips. “Keep breathing,” he says, re-bracing her arm before gripping the two sections of her middle finger.

It’s worse than the first, the dislocation twofold; the last segment popped up and swerved to the side. Before she can stop herself, Karen reaches out with her good hand and grips Frank’s shoulder, twisting the fabric of his sweatshirt — coarser, less worn than the one she’d effectively stolen from him days ago — in her fist when he hyperextends the finger and pops it to one side.

This time she can’t stop the high sound that rips from her throat, butting her face back into the warm place between Frank’s shoulder and neck, because _fuck it_. He’s saying something, but Karen doesn’t hear it over her gasping. He doesn’t loosen his grip on the digit for a second, pulling again, first up, then back down at an angle that has Karen biting the inside of her cheek. Both of her hands are shaking. The sickly rich taste of blood floods her mouth in earnest.

Through the pain she recognizes her body sending other, more unsettling signals: to lean in, touch, _cling_. Her brain scrabbles uselessly for the memory of the last time someone held her wrist (where Frank’s fingers are now). Let her fold into them (she’s crumpled against Frank’s shoulder, wondering how long she can stay). Whispered nice things (Frank’s voice against her ear again, rumbling: “Shhh, shhh, it’s done. See? You’re good. Hey.”).

It’s all so fucking _pathetic_ and she’s crying, Karen realizes. She’s fucking crying into Frank Castle’s shoulder. Not hard. Not the ugly, wracking sobs that she knows are in her too, but enough; enough that he might be freaked out, and Karen gets to be the kid who tagged along on tour and couldn’t make it two weeks without… whatever this is.

(Then she remembers her nails sinking into the skin of Frank’s hand, and thinks maybe that ship has sailed.)

And Frank is still talking: “Splint ‘em and we’re done, yeah?” At some point during all of this, Frank has brought his hand up to cradle Karen’s head against his shoulder, fingers pressing over her hair. The contact is minimal – Karen knows if she pulled back there’d be no resistance. Like his hand was never there in the first place.

But as soon as Karen registers the touch, his hand is gone; moved from her skull back between her shoulder blades, rubbing back and forth. Then he taps her shoulder, a signal for her to get off him. 

For a few seconds, she feels his nose in her hair.

Karen pulls back, abruptly aware of how pink her face must be; of the rest of the band nearby, maybe watching. She wipes at her nose, making sure there’s no snot there to put the cherry on top of the shit sundae this day has quickly become. There isn’t. She’s still hunched down, eyes trained on the drawstrings of Frank’s sweatshirt, trying to will the flush from her cheeks.

He’s pulling supplies out of the kit, little bits of metal lined with blue foam. Micro appears behind him.

“Karen, I’m _so_ sorry. I know I said that already, but. Seriously. A lifetime supply of your favorite pie, even if it’s gross. Key lime, whatever.” They’re looking at her like she’s supposed to put in an order.

“It’s okay. Not your fault.” Karen’s voice is still shaky. She grits her teeth, not making eye contact with anyone.

“Kind of their fault,” Kathy interjects, popping up beside Micro. They must have been congregated at the front of the van, to give Frank and Karen some wiggle room. Karen reminds herself to thank Rachel, later. 

Frank snorts humorlessly and starts securing the splints on Karen’s fingers, doing his best not to jostle her too much as he works. It fucking _hurts_ , but the worst is over, and Karen refuses to react beyond a grimace and a few whispered curses. Her eyes are still pricked with tears. She blinks them away.  

Frank’s just finishing up when Rachel steps around from the front of the vehicle. “Time we got going, if you’re done,” she says, expression level.

Karen smiles reflexively and stands. Without intent, she takes a few steps towards the trees. Frank glances at her face when she gets up, brows knitting together. She’s still not looking directly at anyone, just tracking them in her periphery as she considers posting up in the back seat and making herself invisible.

Kathy and Micro glance between Rachel and Karen, before Kathy claps the latter on the shoulder.

When Kathy climbs back into the van, Micro combs their fingers through their curls and moves to follow.

Frank grunts, hoisting himself upright. “Back door?”

Micro’s face blanches, and they scurry to the rear of the van without another word. Three doors slam: Rachel swinging shut the driver’s side, Micro securing the rear doors with determination.

They get back in the van with a huff, sliding into the second row beside Kathy.

Frank throws the duffel bag into the backseat before following Karen out towards the tree line, maintaining a few feet between them.

“We’ll find ice for that, in town,” he says, gesturing at her newly splinted digits. The fingers on his right hand are twitching. There’s something so familiar… so _normal_ about the movement that Karen almost laughs, thinking, _of all things to be comforted by._

“Keep it elevated, yeah?” Frank continues. “Over your heart.”

“Um…sure. Yes. Sorry.” Karen turns back to the van, but Frank steps closer. Not actually blocking her, but almost. 

He’s looking at her with open curiosity. Karen’s holding her injured hand to her chest, shoulders tight.

“I’m fine.” She jerks her head, flicking a lock of hair from her eyes. The wind is back up, rushing through the trees.

Frank stares.

Karen laughs mirthlessly, ducking from his gaze. “It’s just. Stupid. Everything stops because I bumped my hand on a car door.”

His face shifts then, the set of his mouth suddenly mocking. “So we shoulda just left it, right?”

“No, I just —”

“Feel stupid. Yeah, got it.”

Frank raises his chin. Briefly, Karen wants to hit him.

“I don’t want you guys to think I’m, uh.” Karen has no idea how to say ‘I wanna look tough in front of the ex-marines’ without sounding like a ten year old.

“A pussy?” Frank offers, tilting his head. A small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. It startles a real laugh out of Karen. 

“Something like that,” she answers, smiling despite herself.

“We don’t.” His tone brooks no argument. Karen blinks at him. He steps in a little closer, continues, “Pain response is good. Means you’re not dead.”

Karen looks at him, mouth slightly open. It occurs to her that that might be an intensely fucking _weird_ thing for him to say. The fact that she finds it more anchoring than anything else isn’t something she has to dissect right now. She quirks a small smile at him, feels her eyebrows drawing together; falling into the muscle memory of studying Frank’s face.

He looks like he wants to say something. Karen has no idea what.

But Frank just sighs, looking from her eyes to her injured hand and back again, fingers jumping against his thigh. Sun breaks through the clouds, and his focus shifts from her to the trees, searching, before he turns and heads back to the van. His boots crunch against gravel.

“Come on, if you’re coming.” Frank throws it over his shoulder, like if she doesn’t hustle she can walk the rest of the way to Camden.

Rolling her eyes, Karen follows, stopping short when Frank slides into shotgun. She takes a moment to recalibrate before turning to climb into the far back instead, ignoring Micro’s apologetic glances her way. Kathy’s already settled in, head shoved against a balled up sweatshirt that’s pressed against the van window.

Laying down in the very back, Karen brushes flyaway hairs from her flushed cheeks and sighs. The side door rolls shut. She faces the ceiling and adjusts against the seat, settling in before remembering: _over your heart_. Her eyes search the floor a moment before landing on Frank’s duffel, the engine kicking on just as she takes hold of the strap and drags it up onto her lap. The bulk of it is a pleasant weight against her lower half.

Karen rests her injured hand on top of it, keeping it elevated. The van pulls off the shoulder and back onto the highway as Karen presses the crown of her skull against the seat. Watching trees through the window, she concentrates on breathing, tracing the phantom pressure of fingers in her hair.  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's more! tour isn't over! please click on to the next chapter to finish it!


	4. Tour, 2017 (II)

Past dark, in the blessedly unpopulated alley behind their latest venue, Frank catches his breath and lights a cigarette. The pain in his shoulder juts through the post-show calm, coming in low waves that grow with each passing minute of rapidly dissipating adrenaline.

He can’t remember the last time he smoked something other than a menthol. But after the Pittsburgh show, Karen’d finally clued Frank in on her sudden interest in DIY cigarettes; admitting that, honestly, she wasn’t interested in waiting on Frank to try and switch things up.

So she took out her supplies in the latest motel room, set up shop on their bed, and churned out twenty of the most perfect cigarettes Frank’s ever seen rolled by hand; her brow creased in concentration as she assembled them one by one in a neat row on the back of her notebook.

(He remembers burying a laugh when an incongruently shy smile flitted across Karen’s face, belying the confidence of her work. Always so goddamn pleased with a job well done.)

Between her clear distaste for the scent of menthol and Karen buying him a _present_ , Frank wasn’t about to refuse. He hasn’t bought a fresh pack of Marlboros since. Karen doesn’t seem to mind making more rollies.

Now, he smokes one under a night sky in Asbury. It burns evenly, but not too fast; smoke curling from the neon-red tip of Karen’s creation upward through beams of yellow light. Frank watches.

Tour’s up in two days. His shoulder's better than it was, having worn the brace almost constantly since the night Karen shaved his head. But he won't be a hundred percent until tour wraps, and the band gets some real downtime.

(A sneering voice in the basement of his skull reminds him: _Hundred percent? Shit, Frankie. You'll never be_ that _._ )

Frank shakes his head and takes another drag. His mind wanders.

It’s been a good tour, the shows attended by more kids than Frank’s used to — not just late teens or twenty-somethings, but _kids_ , in all their freshly dyed, zit-faced, iPhone-toting glory. Aside from assholes in the pit and having no fucking clue what constitutes a decent ‘selfie,’ it’s been… alright. Different. Energizing, maybe.

But when they bring up the article, Frank doesn’t know what to say.

In the aftermath of her injury, Karen's been going easy; using her right hand, taking more written notes than photographs, hovering at the edge of the action with a look on her face like a fire smoldering when it'd rather rage.

And Lieberman hasn't stopped apologizing since it happened. Thinking on it now, Frank feels the distant pulse of a headache building. Christ, he’s tired.

As if on cue, the tenor of Micro’s voice — bright and breathless, punctuated by the creak of the venue's back door swinging open and shut — interrupts Frank's thoughts.

“Hey! The place is almost cleared out, we're breaking it down now."

Frank stares at the brick wall across from him and grunts, monitoring Micro in his peripheral vision as they drag both hands back through their sweat-dampened curls. Frank taps ash onto the gravel and waits for them to go back inside.  

They don't.

“You see that girl with the mohawk? The one who kept throwing elbows?"

Sure he did. “No," he replies. 

" _Apparently_ she picked a fight with the bouncer, then snuck back in after getting kicked out. How you sneak anywhere with liberty spikes, I don't know." Micro’s talking too fast, words propelled by what Frank figures is a mix of adrenaline and nerves. The past few days have been rough. Frank hasn’t made them any easier.

Micro shifts on their feet. At the end of the alley, a group of kids walk past, their laughter ricocheting down the narrow passageway before it reaches the two of them.

Frank pretends not to notice Micro staring at him, pressing the pad of his thumb against the knuckle of his index finger until it cracks.

“‘Kay," they sigh,"uh. How's your shoulder?"

“Fine," Frank answers.

A rigid silence stretches between them.

Micro breaks it with laughter too thin to be genuine. “You still upset ‘cause I broke your girlfriend?”

Frank turns his head just far enough to take in Micro’s raised eyebrows, their eyes aimed pointedly at the cigarette between his fingers.

It’s a feeble attempt to goad Frank into a levity for which he is not in the fucking mood. They probably know it. Frank sniffs, looks away; drops his spent cigarette on the concrete before grinding it beneath the toe of his boot. “Shut up, Lieberman.”

Frank knows he's being a dick. Right now he doesn't give a shit.

It's not just that Micro wasn't paying attention when they busted Karen’s hand, or that Frank can't turn his head without his shoulder screaming. It's the way Karen shrank into the pain, all but apologizing for being hurt; her movements tight and shamed the same way they were at her house. That empty, sad goddamn house.

It's also the stale air of motel rooms, and that sniveling prick in the grocery store, and Kathy not knowing when to shut the fuck up, and Lieberman's eyes on him a beat too long. It's Rachel not saying anything when she clearly wants to, and Karen's inability to hide a single goddamn thing she's thinking, her eyes blue and wide on Frank's face like she honestly thinks he doesn't notice.

It's that, simply, almost childishly, Frank just wants to go home. Where no eyes follow him. Where he can wake up in his own bed and roll over without running into 160 pounds of mattress-hogging reporter.

His thoughts seize on that: Frank doesn’t know what Karen will do after this. She’s a good writer; young and sharp and hungrier than Frank thinks even she realizes. After this, Frank and Co. will be a finished project and Karen’ll move onto bigger and better. From what he hears — and what he’s seen at shows — the profile she did on him is a success. _Trending_ , Micro put it.

The venue’s back door swings shut. Frank hadn’t even noticed Micro walking away.

Left alone in the dark, shoulder throbbing, Frank suddenly wishes he had a spliff on him. He lights another cigarette instead.

Weed isn’t something Frank allows himself to rely on. But Christ, it had taken the edge off when they all needed it, after that bullshit at the grocery. And it effectively relegated the shooting pains zipping from his shoulder down to his wrist to a slight annoyance, something easily overlooked.

He’s almost lulled by the memory: Karen rolling the joint; the sweet, heavy scent of Micro’s stash confusing his senses. Breathing deep through his nose, Frank could have sworn he tasted chocolate — it’d been so long since he actually _smoked_ the shit, instead of ingesting it via Joanie’s famous brownies.

One scratch-click of a flint wheel and the close air inside the van had given way to a hazy calm, conspiring with the fuzzy sounds from the radio and the low rush of the highway under their wheels to make Frank’s eyes heavy, his body light. He’d let his head loll against the seat, zoning out to Kathy and Micro’s hyper back-and-forth, unimpeded by their respective highs.

And stoned Karen smiles a lot. Frank’s not sure whether or not that comes as a surprise.

In the alley, Frank takes a deep drag but barely inhales, opting to hold the smoke on his tongue. He exhales slowly, lets it spill over his bottom lip in thick whorls before dissipating in the air.

There’s a restless itch in his perception. He can’t see any stars through the golden film of light cast out by lamps in the alleyway. With the venue at his back, brick wall in front, it’s cramped and nondescript but for a few streaks of graffiti Frank can’t be bothered to make out in the low light.

Not for the first time Frank feels like a figure in a diorama, a sense of being arranged and watched by something too large for him to see weighing on his shoulders as he waits for the sky to break open, fresh air to rush back in. For shit to feel real again.

He shoves his left hand in his pocket, tilts the cigarette up in his right, and just waits. Eventually, the cherry burns out.

 

* * *

 

In Asbury, Karen wakes to an unsettling of weight on the bed. Sunlight burns through her eyelids; she screws them shut, burrows further into the lumpy motel mattress. Around a mouthful of pillow, she groans, “ _No_ ,” flinging her injured fingers outward to keep from rolling on top of them. The splints knock against the lampshade on the bedside table. Karen grits her teeth. 

“Kare _nnn_.” It’s too early for Micro’s voice to be so goddamn chipper.

If it takes her an additional minute to realize that it’s fucking _odd_ for Micro to have launched themselves into her bed when Karen’s been sharing with Frank for over a week, she’ll chalk it up to it being day _fifteen_ of a seventeen-day tour.

She barely cracks her eyes open as she sits up. “Micro. What the hell?”

They’ve stretched out next to Karen, on their side with their head propped up; chin resting on the heel of their hand, elbow pressed into Frank’s vacated pillow. Their hair is a mess of curls in faded oil slick colors — blues, greens, and purples that have all begun to encroach on _pastel_ — and an overgrown undercut that makes Karen wonder where Frank’s clippers are.

Actually. “Where is everyone?” she asks. The words emerge sleep-garbled from her dry throat.

“Breakfast,” Micro says, scuttling up the bed so they can sit upright across from Karen. Their knee bumps her thigh as they pretzel their legs under them.

“Shit,” Karen exhales. She overslept that much? She’s been tired, sure. They all are — it’s been a long couple of weeks. Hell, Karen’s pretty sure that Micro and Frank got into an argument a few days ago, and her own blog updates have gotten terser: a reflection of the ground down nerves they’re all experiencing. But still. She’s always made it up with the rest of Leatherneck.

“Oh, whoa, no, hey,” Micro shakes their head, raises both hands. “I told them not to wake you, it’s cool.”

Karen looks at Micro and frowns.

“Don’t be mad,” they continue. Their blue eyes are big; imploring. “Karen. Please. I’ve needed some one-on-one femme time. I’m withering, look at me.” They press one hand to their chest, put-upon. “I’ll do your nails and everything. Let them have their butch brunch.”

“What.”

“Okay, I mean, not _literally_ , but. Frank’s definitely, like, an accidental butch icon. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this.”

Karen blinks; Micro giggles.

“ _Ohh_ , man, I forgot how funny having straight friends is. You’re like a baby.” Micro pats Karen’s head, smile cracking across their round cheeks. “It’s okay. Let’s do our nails.”

Which is how Karen ends up sitting in bed, still in her pajamas, after noon just over two weeks into tour, her hands splayed against Micro’s closed laptop as they unscrew the cap of a lavender nail polish that claims to change to light blue depending on her mood.

Micro talks a mile a minute; first about where they bought the polish (a store in St. Mark’s; closed now, _fucking rich bastards buying up the building_ ); to their hopes for the show tonight (fun; not too crazy; _weird how The Defenders seem to have a big following in Jersey, right?_ ); before they finally ask Karen, “What do you think you’re gonna work on after tour’s over?”

The question is an unexpected punch through her sternum.

Earlier, Karen had carefully removed her splints, setting them aside for the duration of her mini-makeover. Now, hearing Micro’s question, she flinches just as they gingerly lift the still spectacularly bruised middle finger of her left hand.

“Shit, sorry,” Micro offers, voice softer than before. Blood rises in their face, dusting their cheeks a light pink as they bite the generous pout of their bottom lip and loosen their already gentle grip on Karen’s hand. Karen’s fingers ache, but she’s used to it by now; the sensation more like a memory of pain than the pain itself. “I didn’t mean to —”

“No, no — you’re fine. Uhm.” Karen shakes her head, pauses. The question’s been weighing on her for days now, sending her in circles; the more she asks herself, the more she finds she’s unable to pin down an answer.

( _Or unwilling_ , an all-too-canny voice in her head supplies.)

She ducks her head as Micro waits, glancing at her hands; the nails of her right are already beginning to shift in color, somewhere between pale purple and teal.

Well. She certainly hadn’t anticipated that.

Karen stares at the brush they’re holding. The viscous nail polish moves in slow motion, gathering at the tip of the brush without dripping. “Uhm,” she repeats. Swallows. Then exhales, nervous enough that it sounds more like a pained laugh than a sigh. “I guess I haven’t been thinking that far ahead?”

To her surprise, Micro smiles, small and sympathetic. “We used to plan tours while _on tour_ ,” they confess, quietly resuming their task. Karen watches, a little impressed, as they apply the polish in practiced, economical strokes. “I think… I think it’s easy. To be on tour.” Micro adds.

When Karen arches an eyebrow, Micro hurries onward: “Like, tour can also _suck_. Don’t get me wrong. You’ve seen us all the last few days.” They gesture to her bruised fingers. “The suckage is real. But…” Micro trails for a moment, considering their words. “When existing and being, like, a functioning human with an apartment and a job and a life is like. This foreign fucking object? Tour can kind of…”

“Give you an out?” Karen supplies.

Micro grins, clucks. “Something like that.” The brush swishes up Karen’s pinky, leaving behind a solid stripe of gleaming lavender. Micro meets her eyes; Karen watches the dimples in their cheeks as they announce, “All set.”

They twist the cap back onto the bottle; recline on the mattress a little. Before setting to work on Karen’s nails, Micro had secured their hair with a tie dye scrunchie. Now, curls begin to slip free of it as they return the lavender polish to a clear plastic case packed abundantly with another dozen or so bottles. Micro sorts through them before withdrawing a shade of green Karen likes — muted, the color of a sage leaf.

“Here,” Micro says, thrusting the bottle towards Karen. “Do me.”

She takes it, then frowns when she realizes she can’t unscrew the cap one-handed. “I…”

Micro scratches at their temple. “Oh, shit. Right.” Their dimples deepen as they chew the inside of their cheek. They take the nail polish from Karen and unscrew the cap, then offer it to her again. “Just do my left hand with your right?”

Karen’s lips curve in a slow smile; the heat of a summer day spills through the motel window, and a familiarity which seems to reach deeper into her chest every minute soothes her nerves, at least for the moment. “Sure.” She accepts the brush and sets to work; Micro’s fingers splayed across the laptop, now.

“Regardless of what you end up doing,” Micro says, diving back into their conversation as if there had been no interruption; as if Karen hadn’t clammed up; as if the end of tour weren’t sitting like a rough stone at the very bottom of Karen’s stomach. “You better fucking hang out with me, Karen Page. You’ve seen what I have to work with — you think I could do this with any of these people?”

Her deflection comes reflexively, like a hastily raised shield. “Dave would totally do mani-pedis with you.”

Micro howls. The laughter tosses their head back, loosens another curl from their scrunchie as Karen dips the brush into the bottle of green polish. “Ka _ren_.” They stick their tongue out at her for good measure.

“Uh, yeah. Sure,” she says, after a pause that goes on too long, filled with the silent plea in Micro’s face and Karen taking a jittery breath she hopes they don’t notice.

Karen hasn’t known anyone so guileless since Kevin, who always surrendered wholeheartedly to his needs from others; never too shy to ask for another helping at dinner, an afternoon at the movies, to be tucked in at night. Micro’s gaze is so earnest, for a moment Karen swears their eyes flash green.

“I’ll be around,” she concedes, and tries to promise herself she won’t run.

 

* * *

 

By the second to last date of tour, loading in and breaking down is a familiar dance, each step worn into Karen’s psyche via rote memorization. She offers to drive, once they’re all set. Rachel nods, snaps a guitar case shut. It’s the last piece of equipment to pack away for the night. 

Rachel had broken two strings during the show. Karen curses her ruined fingers for missing the shot: steel strings snapping, Rachel’s blaze of red hair, the audience’s sweat-slick hands in the foreground. But Karen also remembers the thrill of watching Rachel tear into her instrument as Frank hauled a man out of the pit by the collar of his tie dye t-shirt. It was only a matter of time — from her position on the side of the stage, Karen’d seen the way the two girls in the front row were flinching away from him through the entirety of the penultimate song of Leatherneck’s set.

It happened fast, like it almost always does: Frank’s fist crashing into the side of his jaw, the guy going down like a ton of bricks only to be scooped up by Luke Cage; slung over his massive shoulder and walked out of the venue into the dark.

After it’s all done, they pile into the van and make their return to the motel on the edge of New Brunswick. Kathy and Micro scramble into the back row together, leaving Rachel and her guitar the middle bench. Frank, hood drawn over his ears, climbs into the passenger seat. The yellow lights of the street cast a pallor over his bruised knuckles until he hides them: crosses his arms, shoves his fists into his armpits.

He closes his eyes and Karen turns down the volume knob on the radio. Micro had set it to a local college station earlier in the day. The moody indie rock does little to quell the growing sense of finality that’s been chewing through Karen’s guts since they crossed the Jersey state line.

Their room is nice enough, with thicker curtains than most. If Karen stands near the windows, she can hear the thunder of the Parkway — a constant, rhythmic sound that Karen finds soothing; reminiscent of the rush of the highway under the van’s wheels as she drifts to sleep with Frank’s hoodie pillowed against a backseat window.

Almost immediately, Kathy bids them adieu for her nightly disappearance with a wolf whistle and a wave. The question of where the hell she goes at night always burns Karen’s throat, but she ignores it; she’s learned which battles are losing ones, with Kathy. (The answer is, unsurprisingly, most of them.)

While Micro and Rachel dance around each other in the narrow bathroom — Micro taking their weekly shot, both of them brushing their teeth — Karen takes her laptop and settles cross-legged on her side of the mattress, aiming to finish her blog post for the night. Beside her, Frank readies for bed. She stares at the words on the screen, not allowing her eyes to wander.

But she does trace him in her periphery. His back is towards her, his movements slow. _Weary_ , Karen thinks. She blinks and redoubles her effort to watch her screen, but is soon met with the tink of metal on metal: Maria’s ring bumping against the dog tags hanging from Frank’s neck. It’s a gentle sound, barely discernible over the chatter in the bathroom. Yet. Karen’s gaze inevitably slides his direction, and her fingers still over the keys.

He’s taking his t-shirt off, pulling at the collar where it touches the nape of his neck. The dark gray fabric stretches, slides upward; it exposes the expanse of his back in an inverted ‘V’ shape disrupted by a band of thick, black material — his shoulder brace, clinging diagonally to his torso. That’s when Karen notices he’s only using his left hand to undress, seemingly careful not to jostle his right arm any more than he needs to. She chews the inside of her cheek.

When Frank does manage to tug the shirt over his head — his ears pink, from catching on the fabric — he rolls his left shoulder once, then reaches for the strap securing the brace around his right deltoid and bicep. Karen’s focus is so intent, the sharp sound of velcro unfastening startles her. She jerks her head, flits a glance towards the bathroom, then looks back; watches as Frank tears the second, longer strap loose from where it curves over his right shoulder blade down the front of his chest. 

The brace falls loose. Frank sighs quietly. Then he ducks down to stuff the shirt and brace into his pack. Karen’s eyes trace the dip between his shoulder blades before landing on the clasp of the chain. The silver glints even in low light, sliding across the latticework of scar tissue that decorates the base of Frank’s nape, the jut of his upper vertebrae. 

The divot in the back of his skull — where the bullet that killed him tore through his head — is so familiar now; Karen no longer has to fight the reflex to turn away. Instead, she circumnavigates a ridiculous urge to reach out and touch it, just to remind herself that Frank’s okay.

Her eyes fall from the scar to Frank’s shoulders, each home to constellations of freckles made bolder by how much sun they’ve seen this tour; expanded into twin universes bookending the top of his spine. The largest star of all: a knot of dark, bruise-colored skin on his right shoulder blade; another bullet wound, absent the layer of stubble which surrounds the one on his head and all the more prominent for it. 

Sitting up from where he’d bent forward to tuck his shirt away, Frank shifts his weight to one side, pulls his wallet out of the back right pocket of his jeans and sets it on the nightstand. Leans over again, comes back up with the knife from his boot. Sets that beside his wallet. Finally, he leans forward again to unlace his boots.

Karen swallows, tries to generate some moisture in her dry throat. Cheeks burning, she turns back to her work and finds she’s typed the same sentence three times.

 

* * *

 

Karen writes well into the night, a wakefulness she can’t shake thrumming in her bones. It’s somewhat slow going, negotiating the keyboard with one good hand. She’s still up when Kathy slinks back into the motel room sometime after two A.M., her laptop screen casting an anemic glow across the room. 

Kathy salutes her before walking into the bathroom and closing the door behind her. Karen listens to the drag of the shower curtain being pulled aside. Then the squeak of Kathy’s boots in the tub.

The light under the door flicks off.

An acute sense of aloneness creeps from between Karen’s shoulders up into her neck, planting itself in her brainstem and unfolding all the questions she hasn’t let herself ask for nearly three weeks.

Rachel stirs in the next bed over from Karen and Frank’s. Micro has the blankets dragged up around their shoulders, leaving Rachel with none. From Karen’s position, she can just make out the script of Rachel’s back tattoo peeking from under the straps of her tank top. In the muddy blue-dark, she tries to read it; tilts her laptop screen just so, to get a better look.

She can only fully decipher the first word, which starts at the top of Rachel’s left shoulder: _Daniel Alv—_

Karen flinches away. Her stomach curls into her throat. Guilt throttles curiosity. Her eyes scan the room for something, anything she can distract herself with as questions she has no right to ask flood her thoughts.

She finds it.

Frank’s wallet: scuffed black leather, the corner of a dollar bill and a folded scrap of receipt paper poking out. And something else — thick plastic, a metallic chip flashing dull gold in the low light of her screen.

His voice, gruff in her memory, as he shoves a card with a metal chip in the face of the poor, petrified cashier at the co-op in Pennsylvania: _Ten percent off, yeah?_

For a moment, Karen doesn’t think of anything at all. 

Then, the onslaught: _Is it up to date? Why the hell would it be? If it isn’t, when_ was _it up to date? Why does he still carry it? If it’s out of date — and it has to be, it_ has _to be — does that mean the photo of him is from Before?_  

It had been the one thing Karen couldn’t find when writing the profile. Ellison wanted a picture of Frank from his days in the service _so_ badly. But all the searching in the world couldn’t rustle one up. No reporter had been with his unit during the invasion. There was nothing from before that, either. His high school didn’t archive old yearbooks. There was no family.

Karen’s swinging her legs off the mattress — quietly, quietly — before she thinks better of it.

(A more honest part of herself amends: _Before you miss your shot._ )

Leatherneck — for a group of people Karen would’ve guessed are light sleepers — all sleep like the dead. The only thing to get them to rise, Karen has found, is bright light, muscle memory, and rigorously set alarms. Considering that they’re used to being on the road longer than a measly two weeks at a time, she supposes it’s a necessary skill.

She shakes an imagined scene of Frank asleep in the desert from her head and finds she’s already on the other side of the bed.

Her hands don’t shake as she plucks Frank’s wallet from the side table. They don’t shake when she flips it open with her thumb. And they don’t shake as she carefully works his military I.D. out from its pocket.

When she holds it up in the limited light, she does not look at his photograph. The anticipatory burn in her stomach holds steady as she squints at everything _but_ Frank’s face: _Armed Forces of the United States_ writ clear on the card’s right hand side, over concentric circles of dark blue and red; eagle, globe and anchor centered in the latter. _Marine Corps_ , beneath that.

Her eyes still refuse to focus on the photo. She reads on: _CASTLE, FRANCIS ANTHONY. Pay Grade: 0-3. Rank: Capt. Issue Date 2003DEC09. Expiration Date 2008APRIL10. Geneva Conventions Identification Card._  

It’s been expired for just shy of a decade.

Suddenly, Karen can’t _not_ imagine him waking up in the hospital, alone. Relearning his body until eventually being able to walk out the hospital doors, pockets full of relics from a life that didn’t belong to him anymore. And he’s been carrying this around for nearly ten years. _Why?_

Karen glances at Frank, here, now; alive and asleep less than two feet from her in the dark. She takes a deep breath and finally allows herself to look head on at a version of Frank Castle she will never meet.

The picture is small. She holds the card closer to her face.

His nose is still the first thing she notices, large and wide-set; but straighter, less easily divided into sections. His hair is longer, still buzzed on the sides but grown into a short flat top. And she’s not sure how, but his ears seem bigger. His face, too — less angular, the barest hint of unshed baby fat still clinging to his jaw.

No bruises mar his features, nor are there any scars. His skin is smooth, tone a touch lighter than Karen’s used to. His mouth is set in a blunt line, his eyes, dark and direct, boring into her own. The scowl Karen knows so well is firmly in place. But the furrow in his brow is gentle, rather than a permanent fixture; the crease not yet worn into his skin. Karen’s eyes move downward, tracing the line of Frank’s jaw (unshaded by stubble) to his chin (thrust slightly forward, just shy of defiant), to the jut of his adam’s apple. His thick neck feeds into broad shoulders clothed in drab green.

Everything about him is _hard_ in a way that leaves Karen’s chest more raw than the weight of Frank looking over at her in the front seat of the van, exhaustion draining his face to its very bones, saying, _We emailed, wrote letters, alla that. Phone calls, when we could, right._

There’s an intensity in his youthful gaze that makes Karen shove the I.D. card back into his wallet, her hands shaking when she sets it down beside his KA-BAR. She practically staggers back from the nightstand, stepping clear of both mattresses.

When she closes her eyes, she sees Frank — all of twenty years old — staring back. His brown eyes burn, nearly black. The collar of his fatigues as rigid as the set of his lips.

Briefly, Karen leans against the wall. To her ears, the low rasp of her breath is inescapably _guilty_ in the early hour hush, even half-drowned by distant sound of the Parkway. Karen’s heart thunders against her breastbone.

Frank grunts.

She jumps, one hand grasping spasmodically for the windowsill beside her.

In his sleep, Frank curls himself around the top corner of the mattress he has clutched in one large hand. The furrow of his brow is broken into his skin, as natural as laugh lines on anyone else. As a car rolls into the parking lot outside, headlights stream through the thin space between two curtains. For a half second, Frank’s eyelashes cast long shadows across his weathered cheeks.

Karen stays there, braced against the wall, until well after the headlights blink out and plunge the room into darkness.

 

* * *

 

By the time they return to Manhattan, Karen’s fingers are slowly on the mend. But her ability to handle a camera remains fucked — according to Frank, she should wear the splints for another week, minimum — so she emails Ellison and tells him to send a photographer if he wants shots of the Silent Barn show. 

In the meantime, she sequesters herself to the merch table, armed with her notebook and laptop to write what she can between sets with either Micro, Rachel, or Matt Murdock for company.

(Matt surprises her, honestly. He mostly reads beside her in the dark, running his fingers over the braille with his monitors still in his ears. When she’d asked about them, he’d answered simply: _It’s too loud._

That catches. Karen’s thoughts pick at a conclusion she can’t put into words just yet, about frontmen who don’t _act_ like frontmen when they’re not performing. A reticence to engage with any attention received offstage — Matt moreso than Frank, which Karen attributes to his youth and the way he smiles, mean and wide, before The Defenders launch into their closing song — is something he and Frank have in common.)

In Brooklyn, however, Karen sits alone. Everyone else has partners or friends to chase down, offering pungent-smelling hugs and reunion kisses. Though she does get a quick hello from the reporter Ellison sends down to shoot the show, a man with a sleeve tattoo and broad shoulders who introduces himself in an unexpectedly quiet voice as Eddie Brock.

“Great, great piece you did,” he says, shaking her hand for what feels like a full minute. He seems edgy but nice, a t-shirt that looks a size too small already stained at the armpits despite the fact that he’s only just arrived. He fidgets even after he — finally — releases her hand. “Those photos…Ellison said you developed ‘em yourself?”

The heat brought on by the compliment fades almost instantly from Karen’s face, a defensive switch. “Uh. Yeah,” she replies, tilts her head as she speaks; her eyes narrowing.

Eddie barrels on, his generous mouth twitching into a snaggle-toothed grin that’s so friendly it only makes her more suspicious. “That’s great, yeah — I haven’t shot anything but digital in years; it’s a pain in the neck, finding a darkroom that’s not out in the fucking Bronx. Where d’you go?” He shifts from foot to foot as he speaks, a tad bow-legged. Can’t seem to decide whether he wants to hunch forward or stand up straight.

The restlessness of his body language is infectious; Karen can’t help but shift her own weight when she responds, voice clipped, “I’ve got my own set up.” She’s unsure what to make of Brock — if he’s questioning her _ability_ , trying to steal her thing, or if he’s just being sincere. “Defenders are in the green room if you want to catch them before they go on,” she adds.

“Thanks,” he says, and actually fucking _winks_ at her before turning heel and walking away, bobbing and weaving through the crowd — which, of course, parts for him the way it never has for Karen.

She slams back down into the folding chair she’d stolen from The Defenders’ merch table and sets to work.

After the first opener, Karen notices a familiar face hiding in the back of the crowd — comically out of place in a bright blue, short-sleeved button-down printed with tiny sharks. “ _Foggy_?” she calls.

She’s surprised to see him here. Judging by the look on his face, so is he. His expression shifts when he hears his name, a bright flash of recognition that melts into something quieter and more guarded, hedging on nervousness. Their last conversation is fresh in his memory too, then.

“Karen! Hey.” Foggy slides up to the table. “I thought you’d be, y’know.” He mimes clicking a shutter. “ _Photographing_.”

“Taking a break.” She raises her left hand, clinks the splints together. The house lights are back up as the openers break down their set, The Defenders quickly checking over their gear.

Foggy winces in sympathy. “Ouch.” His attention jerks away when a wolf whistle sounds through the crowd. Karen follows his line of sight to find Matt, unaware the whistle is directed at him. He’s just finished running through a quick chord progression for whoever’s running sound tonight. His auburn hair burns pure red under the stage lights.

Karen nods to herself, watching Foggy watching Matt. She sighs. “What the hell are you doing here, Foggy?” Her voice is gentle.

He turns back to her. She just catches the hint of pink beginning to curl up the nape of his neck. “I…” He exhales, pulls a face. “I thought about what you said.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“And y’know, I don’t really buy the whole…” he trails off. Considers. Makes a vague gesture as he continues, “‘Beating people up instead of the law taking care of it’ thing, but. Making it right? I can get behind that.”

Karen leans back in her chair. “Huh.”

Foggy groans and drags both hands over his face. “What I mean is I was an asshole, okay?” He sighs, lowers his shoulders. The tension in his face slackens, a little defeated. “To you and Matt,” he finishes, softer.

Karen nods again, slowly. “O-kay.”

She knows Foggy means well; can see how hard he’s trying in his laid-open face. He wears his heart on his sleeve, too. Only his feelings spill over like boiling water, scalding everything they touch without warning. And, in no uncertain terms, Foggy is…well. Privileged with the certainty that his way is the right way, and the expectation that those around him will follow suit.

He looks at her. His expression deflates. She watches the rise and fall of his chest; can clearly see he has more words in him, trying to crawl out into the open. Karen says nothing.

Foggy looks away again, and when Karen follows she’s met with the back of Matt’s head, bowed in conversation with Claire beside the stage. “Matt’s _family_ , you know?” Foggy sighs.

It hits: _Foggy and Matt are exes of the codependent variety_.

Karen glances back across the venue: Claire’s shoulder leaning just so into Matt’s side, his head angled towards hers. Even as they converse with a wildly gesticulating Danny Rand, their bodies instinctively orient themselves around each other. And Foggy is next to her, watching them from afar.

“Foggy,” Karen says without thinking, hushed tone heavy with realization. He hears her, despite the dull rumble of conversation mingling with the house music whining out from the speakers.

To Foggy’s credit, his expression is wholly unguarded, a fragility in his green-blue eyes that takes Karen aback, gaining purchase somewhere between her lungs and throat. “I know, I _know_ , okay?” he hisses. “I’m working on it.”

Karen opens her mouth — doesn’t know what she’ll say, her throat dry and a little choked. Comforting someone does not come easily to her. She’s out of practice. 

But she’s interrupted before she can make the attempt.

“Karen! Where’s — oh!” Micro practically skids to a stop in front of the merch table. They’re grinning wildly; the metallic teal lipstick they’ve applied renders their teeth almost fluorescent by contrast. “Foggy, right? So good to see you.”

Micro’s bright blue irises pick up the flecks of silver in their lips, gleaming in Foggy’s direction. They’ve pulled out all the stops for the last night of tour: denim cut-offs faded to the color of clouds, rainbow fishnets, and a Defenders t-shirt they stole the night before after Kathy spilled a Coke on their fresh laundry. 

They’ve taken a pair of scissors to it; cut off the collar and slashed diamond-shaped holes up the sides. Karen used to do the same thing with her old basketball team shirts — though Micro’s handiwork is more artful than she’s ever managed. Honestly, she’s a bit jealous.

Foggy goes quiet. Karen watches as his eyes struggle to decide where to look first. For their part, Micro is endlessly patient, smiling at Foggy until he nods, blinking as if just remembering the rules of being human. He finally replies, “Uh, yeah. Hi. Foggy Nelson.” He extends a hand. 

Micro laughs and shakes it. “I remember. You here to see the show?”

Foggy nods, swallows. “Absolutely.” He smiles back; immediately, it makes him look more like himself. The Foggy Karen’s met over drinks at The Chaste, dimples and all. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

Micro _beams_ ; Karen tucks a laugh in her cheek. “You should hang out after,” Micro insists. “Once this is all broken down, Kathy and I are gonna head over to The Safehouse, drop off our shit and catch the last few hours of Gay Goth Nite.”  

“Oh.” Foggy blinks. “Uh, yeah, sure.” Another pause before a decidedly more casual, “Why not?” Foggy punctuates it with a shrug.

“Micro!” Rachel calls from several feet away, carving a path right for them. She’s as no-nonsense as ever, almost _businesslike_ in her tank top, combat boots, and black denim shorts. “You find those spare leads?”

They flush deeply beneath the dusting of glitter on their cheeks. Rachel meets Karen’s eyes over Micro’s head, her mouth twitching at the corner. The expression lasts all of one second. Karen smiles back, dizzy with familiarity.

Then Micro turns, shoots Karen a sheepish smile. “Um. Yeah. There are some spares in the box with the shirts? Can you grab ‘em?” they ask.

Still riding high, Karen nods and bends over, reaches under the table and pulls the spare leads from the bottom of the last remaining box of Leatherneck merch before depositing them in Rachel’s outstretched hand.

“Thanks, Reporter,” Rachel says with a nod. She looks at Micro and Foggy, but lingers on Foggy, eyes unreadable.

Foggy blinks back at her. Karen watches him try and fail to school his features as his face reddens; his eyebrows shift downward, uncertain, as he finally breaks under the weight of Rachel’s stare, turning back to Micro. “I’ll, uh, catch you later?”

Micro nods a little too emphatically. “Absolutely!” They angle themselves slowly towards Karen, waiting on Foggy to break eye contact.

Which he eventually does, with a pointed, so-awkward-Karen-can’t-help-but-wince, “I’m gonna… go find the bar.”

Once Foggy’s gone, Micro levels a painfully earnest look at Karen, eyes wide and pleading as they ask, “You’re gonna be around while we load up, right?”

Cool air spills in from the venue’s open door and caresses Karen’s cheek. It feels like a reminder, or a portent: _You can go back to your apartment. You can just walk away. You’ll have to, when this is over._

Karen swallows the chip of ice that’s materialized in her throat. “Y-yeah,” she replies, voice more wistful than she intended. She nods and swallows again, before saying — clearer this time — “Of course.”

Micro grins. “Good.” They lean up on their toes and pull Karen into a sticky embrace.  

At first, Karen does nothing but freeze. But when Micro goes rigid against her, as if second-guessing themself, she raises her arms and hugs them back, because, fuck, it’s been so _long_ since she’s been held by another person like this.

(The memory of Frank cradling the back of her head washes up on the shores of her mind. She reflexively pushes it away; knows it’s not the same thing. This is someone hugging her with affection, with friendship. Not because she’s hurt and crying and there’s nothing else to do, but because they’re saying goodbye when they don’t _want_ to say goodbye.)

She’s laughing when they pull back, both of them aware that the hug’s lasted a little too long; that they were both squeezing a little too tight.

Micro’s laughing too. “See you in a bit, then,” they chirp, before following Rachel to the stage.

Karen brushes her hair back from her face and watches them go.

 

* * *

 

From the back of the venue the ink on Frank’s knuckles is illegible; blurred by distance and fresh bruising as he goes to work. 

Karen knows his arrival onstage is Leatherneck’s cue. Micro quits gabbing with Kathy. Rachel cooly presses her foot down on her distortion pedal. Feedback cuts through the crowd; a scythe tilling away the din, leaving silence in its wake.

She watches as Frank winds the mic cord around his wrist. Once. Twice. The uneven lurch of his gait is inescapably familiar to her now as he paces the stage, his gaze inscrutable; surveying the thicket of kids and aging punks gathered around them.

In June, Leatherneck had blindsided her. She’d opened the door to a landmine, their sound ravaging its way across the venue floor and into her chest without warning. Now, Karen knows how to watch.

Frank’s right index finger traces a tight loop in the air and Rachel nods, her red, red ponytail swinging upward. When it descends, so does her guitar; overwhelming, tearing like teeth into Karen’s senses. The note holds, snapping the crowd in its jaw for a breath before Micro comes in.

The _BANG!_ on their kick drum flexes, going taut and slack in rapid succession as they launch into the song, Kathy’s bass churning, daring Micro and Rachel both to go faster, _faster_.

(Karen catches the glee in Kathy’s face this time, the bass line like a lit flare over the crowd, signaling: _It’s begun_.)

They swarm. Threshing bodies push and pull against each other, oblivious to Frank’s footfalls propelling him forward in time with the snap of Micro’s artillery. And yet, as Frank lifts his fist — mic gripped fiercely between his damaged knuckles — they know to scream along: “ _I’ll take an ear to feed the pigs, I’ll drain them all to get my fix._ ”

It’s a riot from the first lyric, reaching back to Karen in furious waves. For a breathless instant, it feels as though her chest’s been ripped open; her body frozen at the back of the venue as her heart plants itself in the eye of the storm. Her own pulse and that of the pit, one and the same. She chews her bottom lip in lieu of grinning, thrilled by the familiar shape of Frank’s voice through the speakers; that something so feral could be _comforting_ , a pleasant ache sunk into Karen’s marrow.

Rachel’s guitar turns on itself. The notes loop back and around again, kicking up mud, ripping deeper with each pass. The bass and guitar combine into a roar which rears its head against the shattering backdrop of Micro’s hi-hats; Kathy’s bass pulls hard on the reins, drawing out each note until the song becomes a jagged breakdown of itself.

It’s Rachel’s turn to signal. With a slight nod of her head, the three of them pull up short, instruments screeching to a halt.

The room is silent for a beat as everyone’s attention hangs itself on centerstage.

Frank’s eyes are blown, glassy and dark. His dark gray t-shirt — nearly black with sweat — clings to his upper chest. Karen can just barely trace the outline of Frank’s brace, dog tags, and Maria’s ring beneath the fabric. But it hangs loose from his stomach, the hem hopelessly stretched by the clawing reach of the crowd.

He turns his gaze upward, straight into the glare of the main PAR lamp. Then, voice heavy with silt: “ _Kill. The. Fucking. Lights._ ”

Blackness overtakes them. Karen clutches one hand in the other, a half-hearted attempt to stop shivering in the dark — which tonight seems to stretch, searing itself down her spine.

Then — almost too quiet to believe — Rachel’s guitar stalks through the black. Micro follows a few beats behind. Quickly, they crescendo, erecting walls of sound brick by brick, note by agonized note.

Kathy’s sudden bass note lives in Karen’s throat, cleaves the air in her lungs.

With the three of them together, the light trained on Micro’s position flashes. (At The Safehouse, their kits sits on a platform with lights built in underneath. The visual is eerier at home; but even here, it still makes Karen’s heart skip.) A brief flood of bright white which pulses once, twice, thrice.

On the fourth, the song explodes outward again and Frank _screams_ , face red and shining. The force of it bows him over; he disappears beneath the crowd’s horizon. This time, Karen’s breath doesn’t catch in fear, but it catches all the same when he rears back up to growl the final verse: “ _You’d better catch me before I have my fun._ ”

The lights cut out. Karen’s grin breaks loose.

 

* * *

 

After Leatherneck’s set, Karen reaches the green room just as Frank and Kathy knock their heads together. Frank’s calloused fingers tangle in the sweat-dark mess of brown hair at the crown of Kathy’s head. Her nails, painted red, flash at the back of Frank’s scalp when she grips his skull in turn. They grunt in unison. Karen barely manages to side-step them as they push each other across the room. 

There’s a fond laugh caught in her throat as she does. It’s knocked out of her when Micro launches themself at her for the second time tonight, dripping with sweat, their cheek sticky against Karen’s blouse. She doesn’t mind.

Rachel extends her palm as Karen and Micro sway, both unable to curb their laughter. Karen high-fives Rachel, her other arm still locked tight around Micro’s shoulders.

She’s floating when she pulls back from the hug. Watches Frank and Rachel clap their hands together before pulling each other in for a one-armed embrace. He leans against the wall to Karen’s right when they part, reaching for a bottle of water on the folding table beside him.

There’s a ratty couch in the room. Kathy scales the back of it. Someone’s strung silver tinsel up on the wall behind the couch and Karen aches for her camera, wishing she could capture Kathy’s spritely grin set against the flickering silver like a Warhol darling. “ _Fuck!_ ” she barks, before throwing her head back and honest-to-God _howling_ with both hands cupped around her mouth.

Frank laughs quietly at that, the throaty _nahaha_ that makes Karen’s stomach swoop; a laugh that draws lines into his cheeks, framing his lips like parentheses as he looks down at his boots and shakes his head.

“It’s fucking _done_ ,” Kathy says. Micro applauds.

It’s _done_. Karen all but collapses against the wall behind her. It’s over. She’s back in New York. Her fingers are fucked and Frank Castle knows everything there is to know about her and _it’s done._

“Not the fuck yet,” Rachel murmurs. She throws a water bottle to Kathy, who catches it and passes it to Micro.

Karen’s joints stiffen; her throat constricts.

“Unless you assholes are gonna make us and the Reporter load the van while you go on your hot date,” Rachel finishes, louder, raising one thin red eyebrow in Micro’s direction.

Karen’s jolt of anxiety is lost to the look that draws across Kathy’s face: bug-eyed, eyebrows jumping, jaw practically unhinging as she turns to face Micro. “Hot date?”

Micro’s be-glittered cheeks burn as they lower the water bottle from their lips. Kathy, incredulity be damned, leans over and swipes it from their hand without missing a beat. She takes a massive swig, eyes never leaving Micro’s face.

“It’s not —” Micro starts.

“Oh, it totally is.” Karen hauls the jibe out from nowhere, desperate to cling to the lightness fizzing through her; afraid of what it might be replaced with once she lets go.

Kathy offers her a conspiratorial grin and a wink for good, crass measure. “See,” she says, pointing at Karen when her attention snaps back to Micro. “Even Legs knows.”

Pink-cheeked, Micro flips them all off. Kathy giggles.

“Alright, alright,” Frank cuts in. There’s that warmth in his eyes, the kind that Karen associates with sunlight filtered through diner windows, turning Frank’s irises amber. She finds herself leaning in as he pushes off the wall, setting his now-empty water bottle back on the table. “If we don’t pack this shit up, Lieberman ain’t gonna make their ‘not date.’ Let’s go.” His tone reminds Karen vividly of a long-suffering parent — shot through with swallowed laughter, yet still an order to be followed.

The band starts moving immediately. Micro mutters something that makes Kathy snort. But Karen misses it, momentarily lost in watching the four of them march out the green room door. She lurches into motion a beat later and follows.

In her stomach, a clock ticks.

 

* * *

 

Rachel drives them home. Down Bushwick avenue, eerily still in the night. The dash clock reads just past midnight, and Brooklyn is quiet as they roll into Williamsburg. 

Leatherneck is quiet, too; coming down slow from the rush of the show, the tour — _everything_ — in silence. Kathy barely fiddles with the radio before plugging in someone’s phone (Rachel’s, Micro’s, or her own, Karen can’t tell anymore) and selecting something dreamy and downtempo. She settles into the passenger seat without fanfare, keeps the volume low.

Beside Karen on the middle bench, Frank sits sideways, his back pressed against the window. The van rocks slightly as Rachel navigates the dark streets, jostling him gently. He’s got one leg on the seat, bent at the knee, and the other hanging off the bench. His eyes are closed, hood drawn up over his ears.

Earlier, he’d peeled off his soaked t-shirt and switched it out for the last remaining summer-weight hoodie from their merch stash, Leatherneck’s emblem screen printed vividly across the back. He leaves it unzipped about a third of the way down, giving Karen a clear view of the sweat still clinging to his collar bones, the very top of the death’s head inked into his chest. Karen’s hand itches for a stick of charcoal.

(She doesn’t think about his own worn-ragged hoodie, free of any logos or pins, currently stuffed into the bottom of her pack.)

Blinking, she forces herself to look out the window next to her. Brooklyn’s view of Manhattan glows as Rachel steers them towards the bridge, something as wide and vast as the city from above laying itself open in Karen’s chest.

 

* * *

 

 

Pink and purple lights illuminate the high windows of The Safehouse from within as they pass the front entrance, a riot of color guiding them to their port of call. They continue down the block; Karen hears muffled, throbbing bass from inside, drowning out the muted soundtrack of Kathy’s album of choice.

Rachel steers the van down the alley and kills the engine. “Alright. Everybody out,” she says, blunt. 

The five of them swing into action. Karen finds herself pulling out the cardboard box that contains the dregs of Leatherneck’s merch (a couple CDs, three extra-small t-shirts, and one long-sleeved thermal that no one wanted to commit to in the summer heat) and walking towards a side door that Rachel props open with a rock.

A shadow on the exterior of the neighboring building slows Karen as she walks by. She squints and the shadow clarifies: a chip in the brick. When Kathy stomps past, Karen watches the Kathy in her memory slam a skinhead’s face into the wall with a grin bordering on feral. The memory feels like it belongs to someone else.

A rough grunt snaps her out of it. Frank — suddenly beside her, kick drum cradled in both arms — catches her eyes. “You comin’?”

Karen takes a sharp breath in and ducks her head, nodding once. The ill-lit alleyway camouflages the caught-out flush creeping up her neck under his study. “Yeah… yeah.” She nods again when Frank waits, dark eyes searching her face. “Right behind you.” Karen jerks her chin toward the door, lifts both brows and looks pointedly at the kick drum.

Frank grunts again and nods back; it’s loose, the movement rippling through him as his whole, tired body sways. There is something almost imperceptibly fragile about the gesture. Karen commits it to memory. Frank marches ahead.

She follows Frank into the cacophonous labyrinth of The Safehouse’s hidden hallways without looking back at the wall.

Between the five of them, it doesn’t take long to return Leatherneck’s equipment to its various homes littered throughout The Safehouse’s myriad back rooms. (Merch in the ‘supply room’ — a narrow space between makeshift hallways, three of its walls formed from hanging curtains — Micro’s kit in the green room to be reassembled onstage tomorrow, their amps tucked alongside; leftover food to the kitchen.)

They make their final exit through the side door in order to avoid the thunder of dance music and writhing bodies populating the venue proper — Karen’s pretty sure the DJ is playing a mashup of Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like a Hole” and “Call Me Maybe” as they slip back into the alley.

Rachel stops at the van. “I’ll clean ‘er up and take her back to Queens,” she says, laying her palm against the hood.

Frank grunts in confirmation. Kathy clucks her tongue and flashes Rachel two thumbs up. “Dojo Monday?” she asks.

“See you then,” Rachel replies, and knocks their knuckles together. Then she pauses, addresses Micro with raised eyebrows: “Have fun tonight.”

At Micro’s answering, indignant squawk, Karen bites the inside of her cheek.

Frank and Rachel lock eyes, nodding at one another without a word as he leads Karen, Kathy and Micro out of the alley and onto the street.

Just outside The Safehouse’s main doors, Foggy Nelson bounces on the balls of his feet. Micro and Kathy’s chatter alerts him to their presence; he stops bouncing and lifts his head. Karen tracks his eyes moving from Micro, to Kathy, to her, and, finally, to Frank.

To Foggy’s credit, he waves tentatively. Micro slows. “That’s, uh, for me.” They look from Foggy back over to Karen.

But before they can get anything else out, Kathy loops her arm around Micro’s. “C’mon, Chippy,” she says, pulling them down the sidewalk — away from Karen and Frank — at a brisk pace. “Let’s go meet your date.”

And then it’s Karen and Frank on the corner. He’s swaying gently, stance wide. One hand wrapped around the strap of the backpack slung over his shoulders. Hood drawn.

Karen’s view of his face is surprisingly clear in the night; yellow street lamps rev up the fractals of amber in his irises, conspiring with the flashing purples and pinks still reaching out from The Safehouse to make Frank’s eyes disarmingly bright. Abrupt silence stretches between them. Karen feels it like a tangible weight against her windpipe.

“Which way you headed?” he finally asks. The question is the kind of quiet Karen contemplates often: the kind she thinks people misinterpret as loud simply because Frank’s voice — so low it’s tilling dirt — throws them off guard.

She swallows. “Uh. This way.” She gestures down the block to her right, towards home. The shitty apartment with the broken foyer light. A single bedroom studio where she intends to sleep for three days straight.

Karen could catch a bus, four blocks over. But the night air is just shy of cold against her cheeks and the ambient, frantic noise of the city around her begs for another hour of her time, to get reacquainted.

When she looks back at Frank she knows he hears it too.

He nods slowly in reply, something in him seeming to waver. His tongue darts out to whet his bottom lip. Karen tries not to stare. “Okay…” An honest-to-God whisper, now; a stopgap while he thinks. Karen waits for him to gain his bearings. “You mind company?”

“Not at all.” She finds herself lifting her chin reflexively, her features coltish and unwieldy as a smile tickles the corner of her mouth. Karen recovers by turning — tucking her chin to her chest — and beginning to walk south.

Frank falls into step beside her. The uneven scuff-drag of his boots against concrete and the low wheeze of his breath begin to fade into the urban symphony around them. The city glows in the dark. Yellow-orange lights stream invitingly out from high windows (thrown open to catch the ephemeral mid-August breeze), competing with white-blue LEDs: the headlights of cabs, billboards, the glow of televisions and computer screens glimpsed through glass; a dull neon hum radiates outward from the bars and restaurants they pass as they make their way toward the lower east side.

A thousand question marks alight on Karen’s soft palate, but she lacks the words to put before them. Instead she takes deep, steadying breaths, and allows herself to inhabit the peaceful silence between her and Frank.

Their pace is relaxed, not especially fast or slow. Karen appreciates that they both have long strides; that she doesn’t have to make herself linger in order for Frank to catch up. Every few blocks her gaze wanders downward, idly surveying her Converse and bare ankles beside Frank’s battle scarred boots. They’re walking in near-perfect unison, the hitch in Frank’s gait knocking one footfall just out of time with Karen’s.

Frank says nothing. He doesn’t seem to expect Karen to, either. Pedestrians they encounter walking the opposite direction make ample room for them on the sidewalk — she notices more than a few furtive glances aimed at Frank’s face (faded bruises only, for the time being) before passing to Karen’s, after which they’re abruptly redirected elsewhere. She wonders if Frank even notices, anymore.

It’s when they turn down her block — after maybe forty-five minutes, if she had to guess — that the words come. They take shape on her tongue hard and fast, just as she and Frank make it within throwing distance of the familiar, cracked concrete of her apartment building’s front steps.

She turns, practically spinning herself around to look at Frank head on. “Hey…” she starts, too soft.

He hears her. Jerks his head up at the sound of her voice and regards her with a quiet intensity that Karen can’t believe she or anyone else has ever received as a _blank_ expression.

“When am I gonna see you?” comes out in a solid rush, a rockslide on her tongue. She takes a shaky breath, after.

It clearly draws Frank up short; his heavy brow folds, the line of his mouth rearranges itself, the picture of dourness — but she knows, now, that it just means he’s confused. For a wild, stinging moment, Karen thinks — _knows_ — she’s overstepped, that it’s over now, that she’s revealed too much, that this foolish, fucking… _displacement of feelings_ she has for him has gotten the best of her.

Then, low, rough, and bewildered enough that Karen has to fight not to roll her eyes: “You want to?” He’s staring at her like he’s trying to find the fault line, the weak point in her words. The flaw that’ll reveal the truth.

But, for once, the truth is simple: she does.

The full force of that truth draws a breathless sound out of her. It might have been a laugh, if the meat of it hadn’t gotten trapped under the nerves in her throat.

“Yeah,” she breathes. “It’d be nice…” _Oh, fuck_. She redirects, “To know how you’re doing.”

He rocks back on his heels almost undetectably, exhaling through his nose. His eyes are wide; suddenly scanning the street, the steps behind her, the shrub that’s been fighting the concrete of her building’s foundation and the surrounding sidewalk through sheer force of will since before she moved in. Everywhere but her.

Then, finally: “Okay.” He nods, more to himself than anything. “Okay.” 

Karen nods back out of habit. “Okay,” she echoes. Then, realizing how closely she’s mirroring him, Karen swallows drily, her cheeks and ears heating. She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and wills herself together.

Her second nod is firmer, more present. “Take care, Frank,” she offers. It comes out — like it almost always does — softer than she intends.

She watches Frank’s adam’s apple bob as his attention organizes itself just enough to meet Karen’s eyes. “You too.”

Her mouth twitches into a quick smile, one which she’s certain spreads too wide because she can feel it in her cheekbones. She wrestles back control by chewing on the inside of her bottom lip, waiting for Frank’s unsettled gaze to meet hers one last time. Then she turns away.

Karen doesn’t even try to calm herself as she darts up the stairs and jabs her key into the door as fast as possible; feeling, despite all efforts to the contrary, like she’s trying to outrun something.

She manages a fitful sleep. But this time, when she dreams, Frank catches the rifle; dropped from her hands in the same moment the body falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, we hope it was worth the wait. 
> 
> thanks y'all. as always the songs ain't ours.


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